Old as Time
by Flagg1991
Summary: Sequel to Dark as Night and Cold as Ice. Now adults, Lincoln and Lucy buy a beautiful lake house at a price that seems too good to be true. Soon, they discover that their new home is not what it appears to be. Rating subject to change.
1. The Lake House

**Just in time for Halloween, the long unawaited (is that a word?) sequel to** _ **Dark as Night**_ **and** _ **Cold as Ice**_ **. This story was largely inspired by** _ **The Amityville Horror**_ **(the 1977 book, not the 1979 movie...I don't think I've even seen the whole movie). Hope you enjoy.**

* * *

Houses are like people: Each one has its own personality. Some are bright and happy while others are sullen and gloomy, huddled as if in somber contemplation, their souls chilly and festering with shadows. The house on Lutz Drive was one of the former. A white, freshly painted Dutch Colonial with a wide gambrel roof, flaring eaves, and big, double hung sash windows that reflected the warm, golden September sun, it sat well away from the street, its back facing Amity Lake and its chimney rising against the dusty blue sky like a beacon. When Lincoln first saw it from behind the wheel of his and Lucy's 2029 Dodge Gethsemane station wagon, it literally took his breath away. If asked later, he would not be able to point to any one thing that endeared him to the house, but if pressed, he would say he liked its cozy, rustic charm. It reminded him of the old days, days for which he was not alive but romanticized anyway, a timeless era where kids hung out at the malt shop, people left their doors unlocked, and all the indecencies in the world either did not exist or had shame enough to carefully hide themselves.

Either way, the attraction was instant, and Lucy felt the same way. "It's pretty," she deadpanned from the passenger seat, her hands resting in her lap. She wore her black hair back in a ponytail and her bangs long, but not enough to cover her sparkling blue eyes. Her pallid skin, always on the pale side even when she got too much sun, glowed in the glare of the early autumn brilliance; the light shimmered across the steely surface of the lake like liquid gold and cast the world in rich luminessence so bright that Lincoln had to squint. Lucy turned to him and offered a smile that was beautiful despite its anemic brevity.

If Lucy were a house, he mused, she would look like one of the brooding ones where rats and spirits of the past dwelled in tortured solitude, but inside she would be one of the bright, happy homes - warm and comfortable, its walls stored with the love and laughter of many merry generations like a desert rock stored with the heat of the day. She seemed morose and dull, but still waters run deep, and in Lucy, those still waters hid a treasure trove of tenderness, affection, and even the odd girlish giggle or two. She was not overly expressive, though, nor was she exceedingly animated, so her understated comment about the house being _pretty_ told him she liked it as much as he did.

A gravel horseshoe driveway looped around a tall, stately pine tree. The realtor waited by her car, a clipboard hugged tightly to her chest and the hem of her long, maroon skirt fluttering in the warm breeze. Beyond, a bushy hedge marked the end of the property, blocking all but the second story of the craftsman next door. Lutz Drive was on the southern end of the lake, far away from downtown Royal Woods, and the houses were spaced widely apart, dense stands of trees dotting the terrain. Looking into the rearview mirror, Lincoln could not see the street for the thick wall of green. As fall deepened and turned into winter, he imagined most of the leaves would come down, but for now, between the lake and the trees, the illusion of isolation was almost total.

Chalk that up as a plus - privacy was one of the only firm deal breakers on his and Lucy's list. Another was price. They couldn't afford more than 150k, though that was pushing it. Appraising the house now as he pulled alongside the realtor and parked, he put the house at 200k _at least._ Knowing the area, it was probably closer to 3.

Bitter disappointment washed through him and he sighed deeply. Part of him wanted to turn around and drive away; some people might like window shopping for things they couldn't have, but not him. Something deep in his mind told him he would fall even more in love with the place when he saw the inside...which would make their inability to afford it all the more disheartening.

Something compelled him to get out, forced his gaze to the structure, its dormers like friendly eyes and its door a smiling mouth frozen in the middle of telling a joke. He laid his hand on the roof of the Gethsemane and caressed the facade with his eyes, a peculiar fluttering sensation stirring deep in his stomach. His heartbeat sped up and his palms dampened with sweat; he swallowed thickly and tried to look away, but the house commanded his attention as if by magnetism. Thoughts formed in the back of his mind like faint whispers, and they all spoke the same words into his ear, like angels on his shoulder...or were they devils? _Buy it, buy it, buy it, buy it._

He cracked a sardonic grin and shook his head. The last time he felt like this, he was eleven-years-old and falling in love with his sister.

That was supposed to be a joke, but damned if it wasn't half-true.

That sensation only grew as the realtor, a talkative blonde in her late thirties named Sharon, lead them through the first floor. Every house, Lincoln had read, had its own smell, this one's was earthy with a hint of age that was not entirely pleasant at first, but worked on his brain and intoxicated his senses, quickly becoming rich and aromatic. He was crazily reminded of childhood trips to his grandmother's house, where the warm scent of cookies lingered in the air even long after the previous batch had been eaten. 122 Lutz Drive did not smell like cookies, but the odor permeating it woke the same feelings of fuzzy nostalgia in his chest, and a dreamy smile that he wasn't aware of spread slowly across his lips.

"All of the fixtures are original," Sharon said, nodding seriously as though that was a main selling point. He loved the house anyway, but the original fixtures _were_ an added bonus. The wallpaper in the living room was deep green with a white floral pattern, the hearth roughly-hewn stone, and the carpet brown. Brass lamps of a decidedly Victorian design flanked the fireplace on either side, and the crown molding along the seam where the wall met the ceiling was a soft, gentle white. A radiator heater sat under one of the windows, and rich mahogany columns formed the archway into the dining room. Another window looked out on the backyard, which sloped down to the lake. A long pier jutted out over the water, and to its right, a wide, boxy outbuilding with peeling green paint straddled the shoreline. "The boathouse is included of course," Sharon pointed out.

A boathouse? They didn't even _have_ a boat.

Lucy threaded her arm through his, bringing him out of his thoughts. "A boathouse," she said, "fancy."

From what Sharon told them as they meandered through the kitchen and climbed the narrow back stairs, the house was built in 1928 by John J. Arbogast, a middle-aged captain of industry from Chicago for his eighteen-year-old wife, Margaret. The following year, the stock market crashed and Arbogast lost most of his money, which forced him to sell. It passed through a succession of owners, none staying for very long. "It's in good condition," Sharon cautioned, "but a house like this _does_ require a fair amount of upkeep and not many people are willing to put in the time or effort - or the money."

Lincoln believed her - there were telltale signs of neglect here and there, such as brown water spots on the ceiling, peeling strips of wallpaper along the second floor hall, broken tiles in the bathroom, and the pervasive smell of mildew. The clawfoot bathtub was cracked along the side but usable, and the toilet - which flushed with the pull of an overhead cord - was so old it sat behind Jesus in the third grade. "There is furniture in the attic from the original owner," Sharon told them, "no one has ever gotten rid of it and at this point its basically part of the house." She laughed.

Next, she showed them the master bedroom, and Lincoln was shocked to find that it came complete with its own fireplace. "Oh, wow," Lucy said in the closest tone to breathless wonder she was capable of. The floor in front of the hearth was polished wood, the rest covered by carpet printed with a funky orange and red pattern that, at a glance, dated to the seventies. Lucy nodded toward the big picture window overlooking the sun dappled lake. "I bet it's really nice in the morning," she said.

Sharon nodded eagerly. "Oh, it's lovely how the sunlight comes through the window."

Despite the minor imperfections, and the time and money it would take to fix them, Lincoln's love for the house deepened. By the time Sharon guided him and Lucy to the basement, he decided he was going to buy it someway, somehow.

The cellar door was off the kitchen, so narrow that one might mistake it for a cupboard. When Sharon opened it, warm, stale air redolent of dirt and copper washed over them. "It hasn't been aired out in a while," Sharon laughed nervously. She reached in, snapped on a light, then descended the rickety stairs, Lucy following and Lincoln bringing up the rear. A thick layer of dust coated the railing and the treads, which creaked rustily underfoot.

The floor was dirt and the walls stone. Muted light fell through a rectangular window and cast the space in ashy, twilight gloom; cobwebs stirred in a damp draft and the hairs on the back of Lincoln's neck stood up. The atmosphere was different down here, heavier, colder...less inviting; the good feelings in Lincoln's breast began to slowly drain away like coffee from a cracked mug, and gooseflesh raced up and down his arms.

Lucy's neutral expression fell into a slight frown which told him she felt it too.

"This is the basement," Sharon said with a strained smile, one hand lifting half-heartedly up. "The furnace and hot water heater are behind you and the panel box is over there." She pointed to it. Lincoln followed her finger, and winced when a cold draught of air kicked dirt into his eyes. He rubbed them with his thumb and forefinger.

Lucy watched him, then turned to Sharon. "Why is it so drafty in here?"

"The stonework is porous," Sharon said quickly, and the inflection in her voice was one of dishonesty...or perhaps half-honesty. "It used to flood down here, but the previous owned installed a special drainage system. The outflow pipe and the intake value are both open and that's where the outside wind comes from."

It was only then that Lincoln noticed the sound the wind made, a low, almost inaudible babbling like water over rocks...or the faint whisper of a thousand voices. A shiver went down his spine, and his heartbeat sped inexplicably up.

He didn't like the basement, he decided.

"How about we go back upstairs?" Sharon suggested, her smile too big, too forced to be real. He got the feeling that she didn't like it either.

As he climbed the stairs, the last in line once again, his neck prickled as if in expectation of a blow, and it took everything he had to not shove the women out of his way and run. In the sunny kitchen, with the door firmly closed and latched, the irrational panic melted away, and the heavy blanket of tranquility settled over him once more.

Two months from now, he would be forty and for the past ten years, an ever growing part of him wished to feel young again. Being spooked out by a basement like a jumpy little boy wasn't what he had in mind, but he supposed it was something.

"So, that's pretty much it," Sharon said. "I don't have a key to the boathouse so I can't show you that. I can try to get one if you would like to take a look around, but that won't happen until at least next Monday."

Today was Tuesday, and the owner was leaving for a cruise along the coast of the Pacific Northwest, Canada, and Alaska.

"The property also includes a stretch of land on the other side of the lake. There's a trail that goes through most of it, but its very densely forested and hasn't been used in years. The only way there is by boat or through the woods so getting to it won't be easy, but if you want to arrange to come back, we can charter a boat, I suppose."

Lincoln and Lucy exchanged a glance that to anyone else seemed to communicate nothing, but to them communicated everything. It was the sign language of marital familiarity. "That won't be necessary," Lincoln said.

"Great," Sharon replied.

Now came the part he was dreading. "What does the house cost?" he asked and crossed his arms over his chest as if to protect his soft, beating heart from being _too_ damaged by the coming let down. His mind raced as he sought a way to come up with the rest of the money, flipping frantically through a million different idea and maneuvers. He didn't know exactly how he would do it, but he _would_. A house like this comes along once in a lifetime, if you're lucky.

"The owner wants eighty, but is willing to go as low as seventy-five."

Lincoln's jaw dropped. "Eighty thousand?" he asked incredulously, certain that he must have misheard, or that she misquoted.

"Yes," she confirmed with a curt nod.

Confusion filled him. He and Lucy had been looking for a house for almost a year, and in that time they looked at countless homes from the outer suburbs of Detroit to Chippewa Falls. He knew the market value of the area pretty well and eighty thousand was the going rate for a ranch or an American Foursquare if it was in particularly bad disrepair. This house should go for twice what she was asking.

"Why is it so cheap?" Lucy asked.

Sharon opened her mouth, then closed it again. "Well," she said and dipped her head to one side in the kind of gesture that always preceded a horrible catch, "because it does need work and it has been on the market for a while. The owner, as you know, lives in California now, and the process is really inconvenient for them, so they just want the house sold, they aren't worried about making a profit anymore or breaking even, for that matter."

That made a great deal of sense, but wow, eighty thousand? For a house like this, that was a steal with a capital 'S'. There had to be some other contributing factor - a leaky roof that needed to be entirely replaced or serious structural issues. He hesitantly asked, and Sharon shook her head. "The foundation is old but stable and the roof was redone fifteen years ago. You will probably have to have it reshingled at some point, but right now, it's fine. Most of the work is minor, but there _is_ a lot of it."

Lincoln shook his head in disbelief and looked at Lucy. "What do you think?" he asked.

A ghost of a smile touched her lips. "I like it. I think we should do it."

Sharon darted her eyes from her to Lincoln and back again. "So you want to buy?"

"Yes," Lincoln and Lucy said in unison.

Later, when they were in the car and following the driveway back to the street, the late afternoon stretching into dusk, Lincoln glanced in the rearview mirror, and maybe it was the way the shadows nestled in the eaves or the way the dying rays of the sun skimmed the dark windows, but the house looked suddenly forbidding, as though, left to itself, it no longer had to pretend to be friendly but could return to seething with contempt and hostility. He blinked, and it was gone, just a trick of the light.

He frowned in bemusement.

At the end of the drive, he turned left onto Lutz. Big, rustic houses lined the street, their spacious lawns crowded with pine trees through which Lincoln caught flashes of the lake. "I'm really excited to move in," Lucy said flatly and turned to him. The corners of her mouth twitched up in a smile and her muddled eyes twinkled with a happy glint that never failed to take his breath away.

Reaching across the center, he laid his hand on the back of hers and stroked her knuckles with his fingertips. "Me too," he said.

A stray strand of the setting sun caught Lucy's face and made it glow, and in that moment, Lincoln was happier than he'd ever been save for the day their son was born.

"I can see us in that house forever," he added

"So can I," Lucy said. "First as people then as ghosts."

Lincoln rolled his eyes.

But why did his stomach roll with them?

* * *

In the five years he, Lucy, and their son had lived in the apartment on Railroad Avenue, Lincoln Loud forgot how much he hated packing: No matter how much you did, there always seemed to be more to go, and just when you thought you had it all, something else popped up that should have gone in the box you just filled.

They started small in early September with the CDs, DVDs, and books lining the shelves in the living room then moved onto the hall closet, which was a lot fuller and more crammed-with-junk-er than Lincoln remembered. Odds, ends, and miscellania were taken out, sat on the dining room table, then slowly picked away at over the course of a weekend, the pile diminishing just to swell again as more things were added. Lucy boxed up the least used cookware and the unlikely-to-be-eaten soon food from the pantry on September 20, and Lincoln emptied their bedroom closet on the 22nd, feeling like an archaeologist excavating the buried ruins of an ancient civilization. The closet wasn't particularly disordered, but in the course of daily life, things have a way of getting lost and misplaced, like the I GOT MY PORK PULLED AT FATBOY'S PORK PALACE T-shirt from their trip to West Virginia - he found it balled up in a corner behind a suitcase and covered in mouse droppings. Lucy's diamond engagement ring, which she lost shortly after moving in, fell out of a tennis shoe when he cleaned the stuff out from under the bed, and when he brought it to her ( _look what_ I _found),_ she lifted her brows in surprise. _Now I have two...which means I can alternate_.

By September 28, their bedroom, where so much life was lived and love was made, stood stark and empty save for the bed itself, the dresser, and the nightstand, the latter now boasting only an alarm clock and a crucifix upon which hung a T-shaped Christ with his head lolled to one side. They kept it there because years ago, they came face-to-face with a vampire. They also both wore crucifixes around their necks for the same reason. Lincoln didn't know how many vampires there were in the world - though he always imagined they were exceedingly rare and dying off - but neither of them had ever met another, even so, they always wore the crosses regardless, and sometimes, when someone passing in the street noticed it and sneered, Lincoln wondered if they were simply an atheist...or something more.

On October 2, Sharon called to tell them that the closing was scheduled for the 14th, which gave them two weeks to finish; they were both eager to move in as soon as possible and decided on the 15th.

They spent the next week packing the rest of the small stuff, and when they ran out of that, they broke for several days. Lincoln planned to rent a U-Haul for the furniture and didn't want to keep it, and pay for it, any longer than he had to. There wasn't much in the way of big stuff anyway - the TV, the entertainment center, the bookshelf, dining room set, their dressers, mattresses, and bed frames. He disassembled his and Lucy's bed on the 12th and stacked the pieces against the wall, then carried the dresser into the living room and sat it by the door.

On the morning of the 13th, he and Lucy went to the U-Haul center in Elk Park and, after much hemming and hawing, rented a 20 foot truck from a smiling salesman with big, white teeth - if they packed it just right, he figured, they could get everything in one shot.

He drove while Lucy followed in the Gethsemane. Their building sat on the corner of Railroad Ave and Juniper Street, a brown stucco structure with a pale red terra cotta roof that looked as though it belonged in California instead of Michigan. The parking lot was small and the entrance narrow- it took him three tries, with Lucy directing, to back in and up to the stairwell servicing their apartment.

While she cleaned and documented the lack of dings, nicks, and damages so they'd have recourse if the super tried keeping their 600 dollar security deposit, Lincoln packed what he could by himself. He moved with the urgency of a man brimming with nervous energy because he _was_ a man brimming with nervous energy; the suspense and anticipation that had been building in him was as sharp as that which accompanied those long, childhood waits for Christmas, the kind that grew in intensity as the weather changed, snow began to fall, and decorations started going up. Working faster wouldn't get him into his dream home any sooner than brooding on Santa would make Christmas come sooner, but he couldn't help himself, and when he'd done all he could do, he went upstairs and putted aimlessly around for the rest of the day, one eye always cast toward the future...and 122 Lutz Drive.

That night, after he and Lucy had sex, he lay awake with his hands laced under his head and staring into the darkness, too giddy to sleep. The closing was at 3pm, which meant that they could technically spend the night at the house, then come back for the rest of the stuff tomorrow. The power wasn't on yet, but that didn't matter - the weather was still warm and they could see just fine by candlelight. Plus there was the fireplace in the bedroom: They could set up sleeping bags and treat it like a camping trip. Roast marshmallows, tell ghost stories, christen the new house with a little love making. They couldn't have music, but that wasn't a problem: He could sing Barry White and Marvin Gaye as they did it. _Can't get enough of your - oh, shit, I'm cumming!_

He was reminded of the first place he and Lucy lived in on their own, a rundown single wide in the Happy Hills Motor Court on the outskirts of Elk Park. Some months they couldn't pay the power bill and got shut off, so they used candles, Coleman lanterns, and extra blankets if it was cold. They didn't have a pot to piss in their whole time there, but they had each other, and they were happy. Life was better now - much, much better - but sometimes he looked back on those early days with a nostalgia keen as cancer. Every time he thought back, he went to their very first day, sitting on the floor of the living room and eating takeout Chinese in gathering gloom because they had no cookware, no furniture, and no electricity. They slept on blankets spread out on the floor and woke up with achy backs, but Lincoln couldn't think of many days happier than that.

Tomorrow, or the next day, however, promised to come close.

At some point, his racing mind stilled, and he dropped into a thin, fitful sleep.

He dreamed of the house, and in his bed, he smiled.


	2. Moving In

**Lyrics to _You Make My Dreams Come True_ by Hall and Oates (1980)**

* * *

Life is filled with mysteries. Why do people kill each other was one that endlessly fascinated the boy. Sometimes it's over money or a woman, but other times the answer is a little harder to find. The annals of criminal history are filled with men who killed for seemingly no reason at all, the John Wayne Gacys and Ted Bundys of the world, guys whose motives were known only to them. Serial killers were interesting characters, weren't they? Take Bundy. He was intelligent, good looking, women loved him, his future was bright - the guy had it made. But something dark and cold festered in his heart, and it demanded blood. He, like Gacy, was a sex slayer, his bloodlust entwined with his normal lust like two strands of DNA - inseparable and inextricable. The _really_ interesting cases are the ones like Herb Mullin, though, a schizophrenic from California who believed that an apocalyptic earthquake would strike unless he killed a set number of victims. There was no sexual aspect to his crimes at all - he beat a hobo to death with a baseball bat, stabbed a priest, shot a bunch of teenagers at a campsite in the woods, and iced the guy who introduced him to pot and LSD because he believed it was part of a plot to destroy his mind.

Wild shit, huh?

The boy liked criminal psychology and had already decided that he wanted to work in the field...maybe as a criminal profiler for the FBI. He wasn't sure yet, but he was still ahead of the curve, right? He was sixteen, and at that age a lot of kids don't know what they want to do with their lives, then, as high school winds down, they go _aw, shit_ and run around like chickens with their heads cut off. He'd seen it again and again - it didn't look fun.

Anyway, that was one mystery solved. The current and most pressing one remained, however.

Where was his iPod?

Standing in the middle of his barren bedroom with his hands on his hips and his lips pressed together in mild peturbment, he swept his gaze slowly back and forth as though he might catch it trying to make a break for the hall - a techno slave slinking away on the Underground (Digital) Railroad. Of course, he saw nothing: He and Dad packed everything in the moving truck yesterday, except for the mattress. And his bedding, some clothes - small stuff that went without saying. He specifically remembered leaving his iPod out but...yeah, it wasn't here.

Oh well. He could make it through the day without it.

Giving up, he pulled his white T-shirt over his head and dropped it into the hamper by the door, followed by his shorts. At the foot of the mattress, he stooped down and picked apart the stack of neatly folded clothes, first slipping on a pair of boxers, then a pair of black pants. The pants came with chains hanging off the sides, but he took those off because they kept snagging on everything. They looked cool, but, hey, looks can be deceiving.

Like with him. Standing at 6'1 and thin with wiery arms, long brown hair that fell to between his shoulder blades, and the fuzzy beginnings of a goatee, he wore black clothes and heavy metal band Ts more often than not, which _might_ lead people to think he was some kind of devil worshipper who delighted in suffering...or a gloomy wrist cutter who hated life. That couldn't be further from the truth, he loved life - if he could, he'd give it a big, manly hug. He also liked people and, he thought, they liked him back. He wasn't what he thought of as _one of the popular kids,_ but sometimes, walking down the hallway at school and catching _heys_ and nods from everyone he met, he kind of wondered. He got along with everybody unless they were an outright dick: The country boys, the gangstas, the other metalheads, the nerds, the cheerleaders. People are like ice cream, so many different flavors and most of them are good in their own way.

His philosophy was: Why go through life with a shitty attitude? You're here and you're probably gonna be here a while, so relax. They say that it takes more muscles to frown than to smile, and while that was pretty cheesy, it was kind of true. Being mad, mopey, or sullen takes too much energy, at least for him it did. On the rare occasions he got pissed, he was always wiped when he came down. Screw _that_.

Then again, he realized that his life was pretty charmed when compared to a lot of other people's. His parents were cool, he never went without the things he needed, he was confident enough to talk to girls and get dates when he wanted them, he knew what he wanted from life and had the drive, he thought, to do it...when you got right down to it, he had it made. Which kind of bothered him sometimes. So many kids out there, his age and younger, go through shit everyday - abusive parents, poverty, bullying - and here he was, overflowing with the things they lacked...love, stability, God-only-knows-what-else. He saw something on the news a few weeks ago about this sex cult in California, a guy and his wife kept their fifteen daughters chained up and raped them and...man, it made him _sick._ Some of those girls were as young as six. Fucking six. How could someone do something like that to a child? He could understand being a pedophile and having urges, but when you have a little girl naked and crying and begging for you to stop, how can you actually go through with it?

He didn't know, and it was that not knowing that lead him to want to study criminals, to know how they thought...and to think faster, deeper, and to anticipate them and head off their crimes. When he was a little younger, he thought he might want to be a social worker and help kids, but he couldn't deal with it. Hearing what happened to them, seeing the pain in their eyes, hearing them cry...screw _that._ He might look like a tough guy (and that was a big _might_ ), but when it came to things like that, he was anything but.

Presently, he zipped his pants and threaded a studded belt through the loops. Next, he pulled on a black long sleeve T-shirt: AC/DC screamed across the chest in bold red while the cover of _Highway to Hell_ clustered underneath: The band gathered 'round and ready to party, Angus Young with devil horns and Bon Scott, wearing a shit eating I-just-done-ur-sister-mate grin, sporting a pentagram necklace. He pushed the sleeves up his forearms and, catching sight of the design, he stopped a second. _Wasn't I just complaining that people think I worship the devil?_

No, not really. He didn't think people thought that, he just used that to illustrate his point, which was…

Someone rapped on the door. "You up?"

Mom.

"Yeah," he called. If she was knocking, he must be late. He dropped onto the mattress, pulled on his scuffed and dirty Adidas, and got up with a grunt. Before leaving, he looked around one final time, didn't see his iPod trying to escape, and sighed.

In the dining room, which was basically a corner of the living room, he sat across from his father, who pored over a flood of paperwork, head down and shoulders slumped. "Morning."

Dad looked up, his reading glasses perched on his nose and confusion in his eyes. _I didn't hear you come in._ "Oh, morning, Lugosi," he said absently and went back to studying his papers.

Lugosi leaned to one side to get a better view of them. "That all house stuff?" he asked.

"Yep," Dad drew unenthusiastically. "I had no idea buying a house would lead to _this_." He slapped one of the sheets with the backs of his fingers.

Normally, Dad was a grounded, practical kind of guy, but this house had him _all_ hot and bothered; he was like a kid buying the candy store, salivating, eyes spiraling hypnotically round and round. To be fair, it _was_ a nice house, and if he was the one buying it, he'd be excited too...even if something about it didn't sit right with him: The one time he went there with Mom and Dad he came out unsettled, and though he tried, he couldn't explain why. He recalled a case where a scientist working in his lab got the heebie jeebies and thought he was being haunted, but later discovered that a broken metal fan in the air duct was emitting a sound lower than 20 Hz that could not be perceived consciously. Lugosi wasn't exactly sure how it worked, but sounds of that frequency are thought to trigger feelings of fear and awe in human beings. Maybe that was his problem, only he didn't feel afraid, just...off.

"You didn't think they'd just give it to you, did you?" he asked, teasing.

Sighing, Dad sat back from the table and regarded the papers like a man who's bitten off more than he can chew. "I was hoping they would." He pushed away and got to his feet. "But you know what they say about hope."

"It springs eternal?" Lugosi asked even though he knew that's not what his father was going for.

"No," Dad said, "hope in one hand and shit in the other. See which one fills up first."

Lugosi snorted. "That's quitter talk," he said.

Rolling his eyes, Dad went off to be pessimistic somewhere else, and Lugosi checked the time on his phone. It was a little early, but what the hell, he didn't feel like sitting around. He got up, grabbed his backpack from its spot by the door, and started out, but stopped when his mother came in from the hallway. She wore a simple black dress and her hair down; she looked tired, but then again, she always looked that way. "I found this on the floor last night," she said and held something out. Lugosi looked at her hand, and lo and behold, his iPod.

"Oh, I was looking for this," he said and took it, "I thought I packed it up by accident." His smile fell when he saw the screen. It was cracked. "What happened to it?"

"I stepped on it."

Aw, man. He pushed the button and the screen lit up. He scrolled through his playlists, chose a song at random just to test it out, and hit play. Light, poppy music drifted from the speaker and Lugosi tensed a little. SECRET, SHAMEFUL PLAYLIST said the banner on top. He called it that as a joke because he wasn't _really_ ashamed of liking Hall and Oates.

At least not much.

He hit the STOP button, but the music kept going.

 _What I want, you've got_

 _And it might be hard to handle_

 _But like the flame that burns the candle_

 _The candle feeds the flame, yeah yeah_

Mom favored him with a blank stare as he tapped the power button with his thumb to no avail. Damn it, turn off.

 _On a night when bad dreams become a screamer_

 _When they're messin' with a dreamer_

 _I can laugh it in the face_

Sometimes you just have to admit defeat. "I like this song," he said and nodded deeply as if to say _ya got me_.

One corner of Mom's mouth turned up in a half-smile and she shook her head. "You're a dork," she said. She pushed up on her toes and he leaned down so that she could kiss his cheek. "I love you. Have a good day."

"You too."

Still blasting Hall and Oates, he went out the door and down the stairs. That was mildly embarrassing. At the bottom, he turned the volume all the way down and shoved the broken device into his hip pocket. The morning was sunny and cool, a light, blustery wind slipping through the trees and shaking brown leaves from the branches. The smell of wood smoke hung heavy in the air, and he took a deep breath through his nose then let it out slowly. Ahhh, he loved fall. The colors, the corny decorations, the chilly nights, and Halloween. Halloween was always fun: Haunted houses, costume parties, beating up little kids and taking their candy.

He didn't really do that last one. In fact, if he saw someone beating up a kid for their candy, he'd beat _them_ up. See, when he was a kid, some older boys did that to him - circled him, shoved him around, then stole his bag - oh, and they called his Beetlejuice costume gay, too. He was nine when that happened and he cried all the way home. Life throws you lemons, but, in his opinion, holidays should be exempt; no one's Halloween or Christmas or birthday should be ruined because someone wants to be a dick.

Turning left, he crossed the parking lot and then a wide strip of grass separating the building from the street. He hung a right and followed the sidewalk past a strip mall and a McDonald's. At the intersection of Railroad and Main, he checked the time then leaned against a telephone pole. A BP sat across the street and other buildings surrounded the road - bank, Starbucks, doctor's office...normal suburban mush.

Five minutes after arriving, he glanced down Main and saw his friend Paul coming up the sidewalk, his head guardedly down and his shoulders hunched in a defensive posture. _That's how a school shooter walks_ Lugosi teased him once, and it kind of was; it bespoke timidity, self-consciousness, and petulence. To be fair, Paul was not petulant, but he was timid and self-conscious. 5'5 and all of 110 pounds soaking wet, he wore thick glasses and his lank black hair practically dripped with grease. He looked like a stereotypical geek and, well, looks _can_ be deceiving, but they aren't always.

Paul walked up and lifted his head. He looked just as tired Mom. "Sorry I'm late," he said, his voice high and reedy, "I was doing something."

Lugosi lifted his brow as they crossed the street. "I'm kind of scared to ask," he said.

"Not _that_ ," Paul blushed. "I was, uh, writing a letter."

"People still do that?" Lugosi asked. The universe apparently didn't like him messing with Paul, because a gust of wind blew his hair in his face. "Who's it to?" he asked as he brushed it from his eyes.

"Candy," Paul said.

"Ah."

Paul's crush to end all crushes was on a freshman girl named Candy - Lugosi was sure that had to be short for Candice because the only women he'd ever heard of named Candy were strippers. She was tall and skinny with lustreless brown hair, fish lips, braces, and a forest of zits on her too big face. He wasn't judging her appearance, but, see, Paul thought she was waaaay out of his league when, from where Lugosi stood, she wasn't. He acted like he didn't have a chance but he honestly did. Then again, Paul knew her better than Lugosi - Royal County High was a big school and he never even noticed her until Paul pointed her out in the cafeteria one day. She seemed to have a good personality, but that deduction was based on passing her in the hall and observing that she didn't go willy nilly treating people like crap so therefore wasn't a despicable human being.

Now, Paul nodded. They were walking past Friendly's, the school in sight on the opposite side of the street, its second story rising over the tops of the trees crowding its western wall. "Are you going to give it to her?" Lugosi asked. In addition to being madly in love with her, he was also terrified of her.

Paul took a deep breath and nodded determinedly. "Yeah. I am."

"Good," Lugosi said, "that's the first step to sucking her face off."

"I'm really nervous," Paul said, ignoring his joke. He turned to him and squinted against the glare of the sun. "How do you do it?" he asked with genuine curiosity. "I mean, you're confident and outgoing and stuff. What's your secret?"

Lugosi opened his mouth, then closed it again and scrunched his lips to one side in thought. "I don't know," he said at length. "I just...don't let things bother me too much, I guess. If I like a girl, I ask her out, and if she says no...okay, that's just how it is."

"What if you really, really like her? You don't get nervous?"

"Of course I get nervous, but what's the alternative, man? Sit around and look at her from afar like I'm window shopping?" He shook his head at the notion.

At the crosswalk, they hurried to the other side of the street and approached the school. "All she can do is say no," Lugosi told his friend. "And if she does, find another girl who won't." He grinned and tapped his temple with his index finger. "Simple advice is the best advice," he declared.

* * *

The closing was at 3pm that afternoon at the office of Barrow, Wheeler, and Stone in Chippewa Falls. Even with Google Maps, Lincoln had trouble finding the place - he knew Chippewa Falls, but only as a friend, not intimately the way he knew Royal Woods, or even Elk Park. He knew those both the way he knew Lucy: He could find his way around all three with his eyes closed.

He finally found the building at the end of a wooded lane set apart from the rest of town. He didn't know what he was expecting, but the antiquated Victorian with gingerbread trim sure wasn't it. As he parked, he found himself examining the house with the exacting criticism of a man in the market. Before he and Lucy started looking for their _forever home_ (a term she used simply because she knew it he thought it was hopelessly cheesy), he knew next to nothing about houses - all of their features, such as dormers, eaves, and gables, were just _that thing_. Now he was so used to inspecting them and their fixings that he couldn't just walk up to one and knock on the door, he had to look at and consider _everything._

They looked at a few Victorians and liked them enough, but the only one in their price range was so close to the railroad that it shook every time a train went by. Lucy was disappointed. _I really liked that one,_ she said as they drove away, _it looked like the house from_ Psycho. This one was nearly identical to the one they viewed, but with one major difference: It was painted pink. Lincoln wasn't against that color, but on a house? Yuck.

He killed the engine, and Lucy looked at him. "Here we are," she said.

"Here we are," he agreed.

"On the precipice of a new life."

He smiled, leaned forward, and kissed her. "You're too verbose sometimes."

"I know," she said, "I do it to mess with you."

They got out and went inside - a woman sat behind a big oaken reception desk and took their names with businesslike efficiency. They sat in a waiting room occupying a corner of the parlor, Lucy with her purse in her lap and Lincoln leaning forward with his hands clasped between his knees. He surged with nervous energy, and after five minutes, he got up and investigated the framed photos on the wall, black and white snapshots of the region's past, the oldest dating to 1892. One was of downtown Royal Woods during the Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918-19; a cop in a coat with facing ranks of brass buttons stood in the middle of the desolate street with a white mask covering the lower half of his face. He seemed to be the only living thing in town, and Lincoln barely suppressed a shiver.

Twenty minutes after arriving, they were pushed into Frank Barrow's office, a wide, sunlit space filled with potted plants, filing cabinets, busts on marble pedestals, and a giant bookshelf stuffed with thin hardbacks, their spines forming a rainbow of knowledge that Lincoln's innate curiosity wanted to touch, see, and know.

Barrow, a big man with wavy brown hair and a sun baked face that reminded Lincoln of old leather, went over the closing paperwork with them point by point. An hour later, they signed, paid the closing fee, and collected the keys. "Enjoy your new home," Barrow said with a chiclet smile.

Outside, Lucy threw her arms around Lincoln and surprised him with a hug; he stumbled back and nearly fell, but she pulled him close, and he hugged her back. "We're homeowners now," she said, a hint of excitement in her voice.

Owning a home had been their dream since they moved out of their parents house nearly twenty years ago, and now, staring forty in the face, they had finally realized it. Warm happiness flowed through Lincoln and he hugged his sister tighter. "Do you wanna move in tonight?" he asked.

"Yes," she said instantly, "very much."

Lincoln kissed the tip of her nose. "Let's do it."

* * *

At lunch, Lugosi sat next to Paul at the cool kids table - at least that's what he called it. In actuality, it would probably be closer to the truth to call it the geek table. Shoved into an out of the way corner of the cafeteria like a shameful secret, it was home to the same six guys every afternoon. Seven if you counted Lugosi. There was Brian, a tall, gangly Pokemaster who claimed to know karate but for some reason never used it on his bullys; Harold, a chunky, four-eyed dweeb who wore a pocket protector in his shirt pocket and wrote strange, second-person poetry _(you walk through the vaulted halls of Kal-Em, terror clutching your beating heart…)_ ; Parker, a black dude who wore a black trench coat and talked endlessly about Japanese anime; Paul; Kayden, who weighed a good three hundred pounds and drew really killer art, actually; and Benny, the Royal Woods' Raptors' esteemed waterboy. They were the school misfits, and despite their varied interests, they drew together because human beings need to be part of a community, whether they know it or not. We are social creatures; its deeply encoded in our DNA. When one is an outcast, they form their own society...or become bitter and alone.

Lugosi didn't think he was one of the popular kids, but he had an open invitation to sit with just about anybody - except the jocks, but those dudes are dicks anyway. He sat with Paul because Paul was his friend and a good friend doesn't bail on his bud to go sit with the skaters or the cheerleaders. At first, he was here strictly for Paul, but over time, he came to like the others too. They did their own thing and didn't dress a certain way or like certain things just because everyone else did, and that made them pretty cool in his book.

Presently, he picked up a chicken nugget and popped it into his mouth. It tasted like gloop but he ate it anyway because he was starved and beggars can't be choosers. "...that's why Goku is the best," Parker proclaimed and sat back from the table with a smug flourish.

"Naruto is better," Kayden huffed. A thin sheen of sweat stood out on his doughy face even though the most he'd exerted himself in the past ten minutes was reaching out to pick up his milk. Guys like these, when they aren't among their own kind, are notoriously shy and quiet. Here, Lugosi was the one who didn't talk much - because he didn't share their passions and anything he said would come directly from his ass. He had no idea who Goku was and while he _thought_ he'd seen Naruto somewhere, he knew as much about him as he did the Middle Ages. Which wasn't much. Outside of Paul, the only one whose interests he could kind of align with was Harold: Lugosi dabbled in poetry and song lyrics from time to time, but let's face it, folks, he sucked. He once rhymed blood with HUD. You know, the government agency? Housing and Urban Development? Not his proudest moment.

Harold glanced up from his notebook, the autumn sunlight falling through the windows shimmering across the lenses of his glasses like quicksilver and setting the smattering of whiteheads on his forehead afire. "Both of them are lame."

"You're lame," Benny said. A thin, effeminate freshman with black hair and fair skin, Benny sported the most metallic smile Lugosi had ever seen. It was like his braces had braces. He wasn't into his lunch group's pastimes either: He nursed dreams of being a jock (and walking funny cuz they snapped him with wet towels in the locker room). Lugosi didn't know much about football, but he was pretty sure you had to weigh more than fifty pounds to qualify,

Reaching for another nugget, Lugosi caught a flash from the corner of his eye and froze. Everyone stopped talking and turned, the atmosphere going from light and happy to dark and tense like throwing a switch.

"You're a bunch of fags, you know that?" Ramona Santiago asked.

A tall, rail thin girl with black hair held up in ratty pigtails by thrift store butterfly clips, Ramona was, Lugosi had gathered, one of only two or three people in school who really deserved to be called a bully. She picked on _everyone_.

Being interested in psychology, Lugosi had already psychoanalyzed her and decided that hers was a simple and straightforward case of someone lashing out at others in the belief that if they didn't, they would lash out at them. Her clothes, a simple and dingy square neck dress over a pink T-shirt, told him that she was poor, and her crooked, snaggly teeth were a point of shame and social anxiety for her or his name was Pinky Tutu Pants (and thank goodness it wasn't). Ramona felt, he believed, that if she did not strike first, everyone else would; she'd probably been picked on her entire life, and despite her shitty attitude, Lugosi couldn't help feeling bad for her.

"Hi, Ramona," Benny said, his voice dripping sarcasm.

Sneering, Ramona put her hands on her hips and leaned forward, a stray shaft of sunlight catching and refracting on the tarnished heart-shaped locket hanging around her throat. Her unwashed smell - mold and sour sweat - pinched Lugosi's nostrils and his face crinkled in disgust. "Fuck you, railroad mouth," she said. She glanced at Lugosi and her dark eyes flashed at his expression - though he couldn't say why, he could sense not only her contempt, but something else as well...something like embarrassment. "Stop sniffing me, pervert." She took a step back and looked around the table, her head shaking in disapproval. "Homos."

With that, she spun in a swish of putrid air and stalked off, her hands balling into fists at her sides. Lugosi watched her go with a strange mixture of pity and disdain.

"I hate that bitch," Benny spat. He grabbed a roll from his tray and took a savage bite, reminding Lugosi of a bloodthirsty giant gnawing on the bones of an Englishman. Everyone else voiced their agreement except for Lugosi.

Sigh. She, like anyone else, could make at least one friend if only she wasn't so hostile. In fact, a friend would probably do wonders for her attitude and self-esteem. Remember, people are social creatures, and like Bob Ross once said while painting a tree next to another tree: _Everyone needs a friend._

*Finger snap*

 _He_ could be her friend.

Turning his head left and right, he spotted her sitting alone at a table with her arms crossed sullenly over her chest and a deep scowl on her face - she looked like she hated life and everyone in it. He pictured himself getting up, going over, and sitting across from her. _Hey, how's it -?_

Then she bit his head off. Literally.

For a long moment, he stared at her with an indecisive frown. Sometimes, he felt things that he couldn't explain, and every so often, he just _knew_ stuff that he had no right knowing, like where a lost comb was. The former happened more often than the latter, but they were both rare. Now, looking at Ramona Santiago, he felt _and_ knew something: Sadness. Under that asshole facade, she was a seething pit of sadness, and that made _him_ sad.

Yeah, you know what? I'm gonna be her friend.

Her sour expression, however, kept him in his seat.

Later. After lunch. Or tomorrow. Gotta...build myself up. He was confident and didn't let things bother him, but he was a normal dude and as such, he _did_ get intimidated, especially by someone like her - if someone was a dick, he usually left them alone cuz, c'mon, he didn't like being bullied any more than the next guy.

His mind was made up, though.

His stomach grumbled, and pushing thoughts of Ramona Santiago aside, he went back to his lunch.

* * *

Lugosi sat in the passenger seat of the U-Haul and gripped the handhold, his elbow propped on the doorframe and his head slightly bent because the roof was too low to comfortably accommodate someone of his height. Dad drove as he always did, hands at ten and two on the wheel and eyes straight ahead. He reminded Lugosi of an animatron when he drove...or a guard at Buckingham Palace.

Oh, actually, no, he reminded him of Mom.

The sun was low over the treetops when they pulled into the U-shaped drive. The scarlet light danced on the rippling surface of the lake and the cold, dusky wind rustled the boughs of the trees screening the street. The house sat where Lugosi half suspected it had always sat from the dawn of time, its nooks and crannies filled with shadows and its window glinting like excited eyes. A sudden and inexplicable sense of unease came over him, and as they approached, the house drawing closer, he couldn't help dreading sundown.

He caught himself and shook his head. It's just a house, relax, he told himself. He was anxious about moving, that was all. The apartment on Railroad Ave wasn't much, but for the past five years, it was home. Five years might not mean much to an adult, but to a kid, it was a significant portion of their childhood. He was eleven when they moved in, and in that short amount of time he did a lot of growing, both physically _and_ mentally. He didn't think he'd be sentimental over leaving, but he supposed he was, and he was transferring his negative feelings to the new house, which he saw as a hostile replacement to what he considered his real home...much the way a child might resent a stepparent.

Simple really.

Whether he liked it or not, this was home now, and he needed to get used to it. The funny thing was: He liked the house. He liked being right on the lake - it was too cold to swim now, but next spring he'd _live_ in the water. He could have Paul and some other guys over, maybe some girls, and have a blast. The room he picked out on the second floor was bigger than his old one and had its own fireplace, which was great because he didn't do well in the winter. Like his father, he really dug the rustic aspect and the original fixtures. All in all, it was a cool house.

That didn't change the queasy feeling in his stomach, though, and as Dad pulled to a stop at the front door and killed the engine, it deepened to a nauseous rocking. "And there we are," Dad said with a flourish. He turned to Lugosi, and his smile faltered a little. "You okay? You look sick."

"Nah, I'm fine," Lugosi lied. He threw open the door and jumped out. "Just really looking forward to unpacking all this stuff."

Dad slammed the door and met his at the tailgate, his hands going to his hips. "Yeah...so am I," he said with a sigh. When Mom pulled into the drive, gravel crunching under the tires, they both turned and watched her. "We should get her to do it," Dad said and nodded toward the car as it passed.

"You think she would?" Lugosi asked.

Dad snorted. "No."

Mom got out and came over, her purse slung over her shoulder. She wore a long black coat over her black dress, the buttons undone and the hem swaying in the breeze. She looked up at the house, and her mask of neutrality cracked a little into a smile. They were both really stoked over this place, which is the main reason he didn't plan to say anything about his feelings. He didn't wanna rain on their parade with any _poor pity me, I'm subconsciously upset we moved_ crap. They'd been talking about buying a house like this for years, and now they had it, and he was genuinely happy for them. They both worked long, thankless hours to get where they were in life and it was good to see it paying off.

Turning away when Mom and Dad started their lovey-dovey Eskimo-kisses-no-you-hang-up-first stuff, he put his hands on his hips and looked up at the house. There was no front porch, as was common with Dutch Colonials, and three dormers stared back at him from the roof. From the side, as you came up the driveway, the framing was shaped roughly like an A, lending it a barn-like appearance. Out front, though, it was flat and kind of drab. _Until I go to college,_ he told the structure, _you and me are gonna be pals. 'Kay?_

As expected, the house did not reply.

Which was good.

If it did, he was losing it and heading for a career not as a criminal psychologist but a criminal psychologee.

Was that a word?

He cocked his head. He wasn't sure. He didn't think so, though. In fact -

"Come here," Dad said, and Lugosi glanced over his shoulder. He stood with his arm around Mom's shoulders and wearing a dopey expression.

How could he say no to a face like that?

He went over and stood between his parents, Mom's arm slipping around his waist and Dad reaching up to squeeze his shoulder. A cold rush of wind swept over them, whipping Mom's hair around her face and fanning Lugosi's out behind him. They stared at the house, a snapshot of familial unity. "We can save most of the unpacking for tomorrow," Dad said. "We'll just grab the sleeping bags. That sound okay?"

Lugosi shrugged. Fine by him.

While he and Dad opened the back of the U-Haul and rummaged around for the bare necessities in the rapidly fading light, Mom disappeared through the front door. Dad found the bags and handed two Lugosi, then sifted through a box for candles and flashlights. Lugosi couldn't say he was particularly hard over the idea of spending his first night in an unfamiliar place surrounded by darkness. That's like sex - you gotta get to know the lay of the land before you go _that_ far. What if it was infested with possums or something? Those things are scary as fuck; if he saw a white face and shining yellow eyes watching him from the shadows, he'd scream like a little girl and probably dive out the window. _See ya._

There was no power, though, so...what was he gonna do?

Oh, wait, hold up.

His room had a fireplace.

Although, he didn't know what kind of condition the chimney flue was in. It could be fine, or it could be choked with soot and home to small animals.

Darn. For a second there he thought he was doing good.

Oh well. Possums don't bite unless you bother them.

He thought.

Dad transferred all the little odds and ends they'd need for the night - flashlights and candles included - into a smaller box, then nodded that he was done. They hopped out and, standing on the tailgate, Dad pulled the door down with a metallic clack. "Your bag's in the car, right?"

Before leaving, each one of them packed a bag with toiletries, extra clothes, and miscellaneous things. In Lugosi's was a John Douglas paperback: _Mindhunter._ Douglas was one of the FBI's first criminal profilers and interviewed hundreds of serial killers, mass murderers, and other violent offenders, which lead him to spearhead the development of advanced preventative tactics aimed at luring killers into custody like flies into a spider web. Lugosi didn't think of him as his hero, but for all intents and purposes, he kind of was.

"Yeah, it's there," he said, his mind already lost in the world of killers and the nobles geniuses who stopped them. He went over to the car, opened the back passenger door, and grabbed his bag; it was red with a white Nike logo across the front.

As he made his way across the yard to the front door, open and filled with darkness, his dread, which had settled, stirred again like cold ashes in a wintery December wind, and his step faltered. His stomach rolled sickly and the coppery taste of blood flooded his mouth. He winced and spat onto the grass, but his saliva was clear.

This was ridiculous. He took a sharp breath and went inside, his lips turned down in an uncharacteristic scowl. As soon as he crossed the threshold, the atmosphere changed...became heavier, pressing down on his shoulders like phantom hands. The smell of mildew wafted into his nostrils and his nose crinkled.

The front door opened on a wide foyer with wood floors - to the right and through another door was the living room, and to the left a room that Lugosi had no name for so he settled on 'living room 2: return of the living room.' Ahead, the stairs hugged the west wall while a hall serviced the kitchen. Feeble white light spilled from the archway, telling him Mom was...doing something. They didn't have any food or cookware so she wasn't making dinner or putting anything away. Maybe she was summoning food from the Realm of Meals? That's like Meals on Wheels, only it's the Grim Reaper who delivers it, and each time you have him over he takes five minutes off your life.

Still too lazy to cook?

Going left, he climbed the stairs into the deeper shadows of the second floor, his skin starting to crawl and his mind racing with a thousand different images, every horror movie he'd ever seen coming back to him in painstaking and glorious detail. You know who was _really_ scary? Zelda from _Pet Sematary,_ all pale and hunched and moaning. _I'm gonna twist your back like mine so you can never get out of bed again...NEVER GET OUT OF BED AGAIN!_ What if she rushed out of the dark and -

His heart slammed and suddenly, for the first time he could remember, he was truly, honestly afraid, his stomach knotted and his vision straining. He froze as every muscle in his body tensed and the air drained from his lungs in a rush. Stop being an ass, he told himself, there _is_ no Zelda, Jesus, what's wrong with you?

He swallowed thickly. Whether Zelda from _Pet Sematary_ existed or not, the corridor was filled with menace now, and the shadows swirled around him like living beings - demonic pagans dancing round a bonfire in hell, moving faster as faster as the tide of their satanic lust rose until they were spinning around in a vortex of damned wails and scratching claws. He squeezed his eyes closed, forced himself to take a deep, calming breath, and let it out slowly.

When he opened them again, he saw only the physical absence of light, nothing more and nothing less. The atmosphere was lighter and the shadows no longer hid shapeless monstrosities. He was a normal guy in the hallway of a normal house who felt normal misgivings about moving from his longtime home and they were manifesting as ill-ease and dark thoughts.

Right.

Unclenching his muscles, he went to his bedroom, the last door on the right and directly across from the bathroom. The hall continued in an L shape and turned into the back stairs which lead down into the kitchen: Voices drifted up...his parents, but he couldn't make out words. In his room, he dropped his bag to the floor and took out a flashlight he jammed into his belt. He clicked it on and carved the beam through the darkness; cobwebs fluttered in the corners and dust motes flowed through the light like driving snow. He went over to window, beyond which full night had fallen, and glanced out, scanning the backyard for nothing in particular, or so his brain told him.

Nothing moved save for the surface of the lake.

Setting the flashlight down, he knelt down, laid his sleeping bag out against one wall, then went through his bag, taking out his toothbrush, toothpaste, and deodorant and lining them up on the floor. Something moved in his periphery and he whipped around, bringing the light up and revealing his father. Dad winced and held his hand up to block out the brilliance. "My eyes," he said. Huh. I could have sworn I just heard him in the kitchen.

Relaxing, Lugosi lowered the beam. "Sorry."

"We're thinking of ordering a pizza," Dad said as he came into the room, his eyes darting curiously around.

"Cool," Lugosi said and tracked his father's movements. His gaze landed on the fireplace and he remembered. "What kind of condition are the, uh, fireplaces in?" he asked and nodded toward it.

"Excellent condition," he said, his tone indicating that he was quoting someone directly, probably the realtor. "You thinking of building a fire?"

Lugosi shrugged. He was sitting on his butt now with his knees drawn to his chest, forearms jutting out on top. He started to speak, but stopped when something occurred to him. "I don't have any wood," he said.

Dad bobbed his head to one side. "Yeah, that's a pretty big drawback."

"Yep," Lugosi said and prodded the inside of his bottom lip with his tongue as he thought. Maybe he could rip up the floorboards and use those.

Nah, Mom and Dad would whip his ass with one if he did.

Looks like he was just gonna have to rough it.

Dad cast one final look around and went to the door. "Alright, I'll call you -"

Lugosi was already getting up. "Nah, I'll come down," he said, "It's pretty lonely up here."

 _And spooky,_ he thought, but did not add.

* * *

 **The character Lugosi belongs to Salvo1985 AKA tmntfan85. Ramona's mine. Happy Halloween.**


	3. A Stir of Echoes

On his first night in his new home, Lincoln woke promptly at 3am to the sound of screaming. Heart in throat, he sat bolt upright, and Lucy, sitting up next to him and reading by the flickering light of a Coleman lantern looked at him. "What was that?"

"What was what?" she asked.

Lincoln swallowed around a lump. His heart was back where it belonged but knocked painfully into his ribs and cold sweat slathered his bare chest. "T-That screaming," he said. Even now he could hear it lingering in his head, a high, mournful sound like the cry of a banshee across the midnight still of a misty Irish moor. He darted his gaze around the shadowy living room but didn't see anything.

"No one screamed," she said and closed her book. A buff man with long, flowing hair graced the cover, holding a big breasted blonde at a dip while a city burned in the background. Lincoln could only see part of the title:

ERATE

SIRE

He looked into Lucy's eyes, confused. "Are you sure?"

"Yes," she said, "I'm sure. You were dreaming."

Turning away and looking down into his lap, Lincoln furrowed his brows in consternation. He could have _sworn_ someone screamed - it quivered against his eardrums still, resounding through the chambers of his skull like an unpleasant odor long after the source has been thrown away. Chuckling, he shook his head and rubbed his grainy eyes with the heels of his palms. He didn't have dreams that realistic very often, but when he did they always left him feeling shaky and out of sorts, as though something otherworldly brushed past him in the dark and he didn't realize it until his mind cleared.

Instinctively, his hand crept to the cross hanging from his neck and traced its outline, his thumb stroking Christ's head. In moments such as these, most men have at least the comfort of believing that the supernatural does not exist. He did not. Twice in his life, he was forced to stare it in the face, and ever since the last time, he had been waiting for it to find him again. He was not afraid, nor did he constantly look over his shoulder, but he knew always, in the back of his mind, that there was a chance that sooner or later, something would happen, the way a normal man knows that there is a chance his house will be robbed.

What bothered him was not knowing _what_ exactly was out there. Vampires existed, he knew, and so did demons...or whatever The Man With No Name was. Were there other creatures too? Were all of the nightmare bedtime stories true? That mean ghouls, ghosts, the living dead, witches, sea monsters, Bigfoot, and aliens all stalked the night, jostling for position and for the privilege to cause havoc. It stood to reason that they must exist, but he'd never met any that he knew of, so he could not say, and that weighed heavy upon him if he let it.

Which is why he didn't let it.

Lucy touched his back, her hand cool and dry like old parchment, and he glanced at her. In the throbbing glow of the lantern, her face was pooled with shadows, her lips a neutral line but her dark eyes soft with concern. "You wanna talk about it?" she asked.

He thought for a moment, then shook his head. "No, it was just….a scream. I wasn't having a nightmare that I can remember." He rolled his neck and winced; twenty years ago, sleeping on the floor didn't bother him, but now, from all the aches and pains flaring into life through his body, it did.

"I had a dream like that last week," Lucy said. "I heard a dog barking."

Lincoln scrunched his brows and studied her face for signs of deceit. Every so often, she suggested they get a dog - was she dropping a hint or being serious?

Her little grin told him it was the former. Lincoln didn't mind dogs, or cats either for that matter, but he _did_ mind having one shoved up in a tiny apartment. An animal, like a person, needs space and room to move.

Which...they now had.

"You want a dog?" he asked pointedly.

Lucy nodded. "Yes," she said, "I do want a dog."

"Alright," he said and stretched out, the muscles in his back popping, "we'll get a dog."

Leaning over, Lucy shut off the lantern and plunged the room into darkness. She laid down and nestled herself against Lincoln's body, her butt pressing against his crotch and her clean smelling black hair fluttering across his nose. He laid his arm in the curve of her hip, slid his other arm between her and the mattress, and laced his hands over her stomach. She reached behind and moved her hair away from his face, expose the slope of her neck. "Good?" she asked. They had been together so long that they had cuddling, like everything else, down to a science.

"Yes," he said and kissed her neck.

She shivered and let out a firm little giggle that echoed in the vast, unfurnished space. "That tickles," she said.

"I know," Lincoln replied. He hugged her tight and took a deep breath through his nose, her scent filling his nostrils like perfume. For a while, neither of them spoke, both basking in the low, warm glow of their shared intimacy. They had been together as man and woman for nearly thirty years, since he was eleven and she was eight, and snuggling felt as good now, both physically and emotionally, as it did in the beginning. During the day, he found himself unable to keep from touching her, squeezing her shoulders as she stood at the stove, ghosting his hand over her hip as he passed behind, patting her butt as they walked beside each other in public, holding her hand, kissing the top of her head over the back of the couch, rubbing her feet when they sat together in the evening, and playing with her hair in bed, soothing her to sleep and then himself. Everyone who knew they said they were "cute" because of their open affection and obvious love. Lugosi called them "embarrassing." He was joking, though...at least part of the way. He didn't mind walking beside them when they held hands, but if they got too touchy, or giggly, his step invariably slowed or quickened.

 _Yeah, that's a little too much for me,_ he said once, and Lincoln laughed. _You'll do the same thing,_ he told his son. _Your kids will roll their eyes and pretend they don't know you._

Lugosi nodded. _Yeah, probably._ Then he grinned. _But it's okay when_ I _do it._

What could he say? His love for Lucy did not diminish with the years, as love is sometimes wont to do; it increased, spreading out from his heart and into all of his organs and bone marrow, like the sweetest cancer. She was the sunshine of his life and the most important thing in the world to him behind only their son - in fact, they were all he had. Their parents virtually disowned them after they found out about their relationship and their sisters became cold and distant. They genuinely tried, he believed, to accept their union, but none truly could. When he and Lucy saw them now, they were congenial but in a detached sort of way, as though they were not their brother and sister but friends instead...friends whose lifestyle they did not agree with.

For nearly two decades, it had been Lincoln and Lucy on their own. She was twenty-one when she gave birth to Lugosi, and from there, it was the three of them, a tiny but close-knit family content and happy with itself. Their life was not perfect: Sometimes Lincoln and Lucy argued, and though Lugosi was a good boy, he occasionally needed a grounding; every once in a while, he ran his mouth and talked back. That's life, though. Some days are sunny, and some are rainy. Nothing is perfect, no _one_ is perfect, but Lincoln loved his life, and though they could use a little more money and a newer car, he could never imagine, _would_ never imagine, having any other but his own.

He kissed Lucy's neck again. "What what of dog do you want?" he asked drowsily.

"I'm not sure," she replied, her voice clear and low like always. She laid her hand on his and rubbed his knuckles with her fingertips. "Something big. Something you can play fetch and stuff with and not have to worry about trampling underfoot."

Lincoln knitted his brows in thought. He wasn't very good with dog breeds but he knew a couple. German shepherds, rottweilers, boxers, pitbulls, St. Bernards, greyhounds, uh...that was it as far as larger breeds went. Most of those had a reputation for being vicious, though, and one was known to go rabid and trap people inside sweltering cars.

Oh! Golden retrievers! Those are good dogs. You hear about rots and pits mauling people all the time, but never a golden retriever. He didn't think they were even capable of hurting someone...except by getting excited and jumping on them.

Who was the author Lucy read...the one whose books always include a golden retriever? He couldn't remember, but every time she left one lying around, he picked it up and read the synopsis to see if a golden was part of the plot, and more times than not, it was. "How about a golden retriever?" he asked.

She didn't immediately respond, but he could sense her turning the idea over and over in her head. "I like those," she said finally. "They're naturally gentle, easy to train, and they have an instinctive love of water."

That she knew those things off the top of her head did not surprise him. "Ours would have a blast with the lake," he said.

"He would," Lucy agreed. "They're also really intelligent, which means I can finally have someone to have a decent conversation with when Lugosi isn't around."

That made Lincoln laugh, and the flat, sober way in which she said it made him laugh even harder. "You're funny," he said and hugged her.

"I'm also horny," she stated and rubbed her butt into his crotch. She wore a thin black nightgown through which he could feel the dip of her cleft. His dick twitched against the inseam of his briefs and his heartbeat sped up.

When they were younger, they would sometimes make love three or four times in a night, returning to one another's bodies like drunks to a bottle, hopelessly addiction to the taste and sensation of the other and to the act of joining together as one. Neither could go that often anymore, but sometimes they could manage twice. Earlier, before falling asleep, Lincoln mounted her and held her hand; now, he ran his hand over the bare, creamy flesh of her bent leg, his fingertips lingering and his lips brushing the back of her neck. She sighed and guided his other hand to her tiny breast, her butt grinding lightly against his swelling bulge when she began rubbing her thighs together. He gently squeezed her through the silken fabric of her dress and kneaded his thumb into her stiffening nipple.

She tilted her head back and purred when he kissed the side of her neck, his lips wrapping around her rapidly pounding pulse. Fire filled his depths and his pushed the hem of her dress up, his fingers caressing the V of her sex. She lifted up a little, and he hiked the dress around her hips, then tugged his underwear down enough to free his rigid member. She rolled to face him and cocked her leg over his hip, her hand going to his cheek and their lips urgently fusing. She bent her knee and braced her heel against the back of his leg as he entered her, a moan passing from one mouth to the other. Lincoln slipped his hand under her dress and danced his fingers over her warm skin; finding her breast, he cupped it in his palm and made firm circles against her nipple with his thumb. Their tongues danced slowly at first, then more quickly as their passion crested; Lincoln released her breast, held her hip, and went faster, his breathing ragged and his heart blasting, each stroke into her boiling core bringing him closer to orgasm.

When the end came, he gave one final thrust and moaned into Lucy's mouth as his climax rushed out and filled her center with thick, liquid fire. Lucy curled her fingers into his chest and rocked her hips, her walls closing around his shaft and sucking out every last drop, a muted tremor going through her as her own orgasm waxed and waned like the cycle of the moon. She broke her lips from his and held his head to breast, the reassuring sound of her living heartbeat filling his head and the feverish tremble of her cumming body drawing one last squirt from his deflating balls.

They lay in a sweaty tangle of limbs a while before Lucy spoke, her voice even and measured. "I love you, Lincoln," she said.

"I love you too," Lincoln replied and wove his fingers through hers.

Like that, they fell asleep.

* * *

Saturday morning, Lugosi woke in a fall of bright autumn sunshine, his eyelids rippling against the blinding light and finally creaking open. He looked toward the window in confusion. Why was it so -?

There were no curtains.

His confusion deepened. _What happened to my curtains?_

Then it dawned on him. They were in the moving truck, and he was no longer in his old room but his new room at the Lutz Drive house.

Oh. Okay.

He rubbed his temple with the flat of his palm and sat up with a protracted yawn. Next, he massaged his stiff neck and rolled his head; vertigo overcame him and he held up his hand to steady himself. Like his mother, he was a natural early bird, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed while other people dragged their shattered carcasses to the coffee pot like zombies, but right now he felt like Dad did in the mornings: Drooping and barely alive. He scratched his head and tried to remember what time he went to bed. It wasn't very late. Eleven? Midnight, maybe? He didn't fall instantly asleep, though, the wind kept him awake. Not the wind itself, really, but the low, hissing noise it made in the eaves that sounded uncomfortably like whispering. At one point he could have sworn it _was_ whispering...and that it was saying _the house is haunted, the house is haunted, the house is haunted._ To be fair, though, at another it sounded like _tacos are good._ Hey, man, I can agree with _that_ one, not so much the haunted stuff.

Clearly, both times he was just hearing what his mind wanted him to. The human brain is a complex thing, and one of the many things it's trained to do is make order out of chaos. It sees patterns and meaning where there are none - it hears voices in white noise and discerns faces in chicken scratch.

In other words, your brain's kind of a liar.. A well-intentioned liar, but a liar nonetheless.

Either way, he felt kind of dumb now in the daylight - first the thing about Zelda from _Pet Sematary_ then the whispers. Real mature, huh?

First day jitters, he told himself, that was all.

Getting up, he stretched and rubbed the back of his neck, then went out into the shadow-wrapped hallway. Voices drifted up the backstairs, telling him his parents were awake. What time was it, anyway? His internal clock said nine, so it was probably close to that, but sometimes his internal clock was wrong, so...there's that.

He crossed the hall, went into the bathroom, and shut the door behind him. At the toilet, he pulled himself free of his basketball shorts, peed, then flushed. In his room, he grabbed his toothbrush and toothpaste, went back into the bathroom, and hurriedly brushed - Dad would want to get started on unpacking soon. He favored his reflection in the grimey mirror, his features sharp but not unpleasant. He didn't think of himself as handsome, but his mom told him he was all the time, so it had to be true, right? He saw himself being turned down for a date and getting all pissy about it. _Well, I'm my_ mom's _type._ How would the girl react to _that?_ Probably with disgusted disbelief. Then the next day he comes back with a snotty tone, _my mom says you_ have _to date me, so there._

That'd be the funniest thing ever. He kind of wanted to do it now, but he probably wouldn't. He didn't want people thinking he was weird or anything.

Done, he spat, rinsed out the sink, and left his brush and 'paste on the counter. In his room, he took his clothes out of his bag and dressed - blue jeans, black T-shirt, and a red and black flannel shirt. He pulled his hair back in a ponytail then stepped into his shoes. He wasn't trying to look like Kurt Cobain, but as he passed the bathroom and caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, he realized that that's exactly who he looked like. Maybe he should take the flannel off.

Nah, it looked pretty cold outside. Oh well, there were worse things to look like. Like the singer from Green Day. They had good music but they all looked like grown men copying teenage emos, sitting at the food court across from Hot Topic and wishing they didn't have to stay 1000 feet from kids. _Society doesn't understand me, man._ Actually, man, society does, that's why you're on a list.

At the bottom, the voices were louder, their timbre rising as if in argument. Uh-oh, Mom and Dad are disagreeing again. Better step in before they beat each other up. He went through the door, and they ceased like throwing a switch.

The sun washed kitchen was empty and silence held sway.

He faltered. Uh...okay, I _know_ I heard them talking. He looked around but didn't see anyone; the place _felt_ empty. "Hello?" he called, his voice echoing.

No reply.

Confused and tensing, he closed the door and went into the dining room, whipping his gaze this way and that but finding only empty house. At the window, he spotted them walking along the shore of the lake, the wind fluttering through their hair and their hands clasped...or maybe they weren't, Lugosi couldn't tell, he kinda needed glasses. He could see well enough to know that that was indeed them.

Was someone else here?

The back of his neck prickled and he turned away from the glass, his hands balling defensively. Neither Mom or Dad had close friends and none of his aunts or cousins ever came over (the incest thing...which, admittedly, he didn't take too well either when he found out). The left one eventuality. The place was crawling with burglars.

He furrowed his brows. The dining room and living room 2: return of the living room were largely open to each other, separated by a wide archway. Light spilled through the bay windows and gleamed dully on the dusty covered floor. Since the house was still barren of furniture, there was nothing a burglar could hide behind. Plus, if someone had robbery on their mind, they picked the wrong house. Literally. There was nothing to steal. Except for copper pipes, probably. There _was_ the moving truck.

Steeling himself for a fight, he went into living room 2 and crossed to the window. The truck stood where he and Dad left it, the back door firmly closed. He didn't see any other cars and certainly no people.

Hm. He did a circuit of the first floor but didn't find anything out of place. He made it back to the kitchen just as Mom and Dad came in from outside, their faces red with wind burn and their hands still clasped together. "Hey," Dad greeted and shut the door, "you're up."

Lugosi threw a glance over his shoulder to make certain no one was behind him (they weren't). "Yeah, I'm up," he said.

Dad sensed something was off. "You alright?"

No, he wasn't. He could ascribe a lot to his brain being a drama queen over moving, but not distinctly hearing voice. If it was one, maybe, but he knew for sure that he heard two, one deeper and the other higher - a man and woman. He went back to the whispering eaves and the sensation of being surrounded by a presence in the hall even though those had nothing to do with now. One was the wind and the other was him scaring himself with thoughts of a dumb horror movie character. Those were easily explainable, but not this. Those voices were just on the other side of the door, yet when he came through, they vanished. Sudden as that. They didn't dwindle as though the speakers were walking away, they cut sharply out.

The only conclusion he could logically reach was that he was hearing things, and from everything he'd read on mental illness, hearing voices was a _very_ bad sign. It starts small, then next thing you know, you're being barraged with taunts, insults, and orders to kill.

Something cold and slimy uncoiled in the pit of his stomach and he felt like he was going to be sick.

Dad watched him with worry, Mom too. Did he look crazy? Was there sickness in his eyes? There often is, you know. When someone's schizophrenic, you can see it as surely as you can see when someone has AIDS, a sort of wide, fevered intensity that stirs disquiet in your stomach if you look too long.

He remembered his reflection in the mirror. He _thought_ he looked normal, but the mentally ill never doubt or question their own wellness. Which, come to think of it, must mean that he _wasn't_ sick, or else he wouldn't be having these misgivings.

Buuuut…

...he was convincing himself that he was well which brought him back to thinking he was normal when, in fact, he might not be.

Now he was confused _and_ unnerved. "Nah, I'm fine," he said, and blurted out the first lie that came to mind, "I just thought I heard something in the wall. Probably a mouse."

Dad bought it. Whew. "There probably are mice in the walls," he said. "We gotta go into town anyway so we can get some poison at the hardware store."

"Sounds good," Lugosi said and fought the urge to look over his shoulder again.

"We need to unpack the truck first." He gazed his fingers over Mom's arm as she passed, going somewhere to do something, then put his hands on his hips. "There's leftover pizza if you're hungry. We can go out when you're done."

Well, Lugosi _was_ hungry but now his appetite was flatlined. "I'm good," he said, "we can get started now."

For the rest of the morning, he worried over whether or not he was going crazy. At one point, standing on the tailgate and waiting for Dad to hand him a box, he caught a flash of the house in his periphery and tensed. _I don't like the way you're looking at me,_ he thought in jest, but his attempt at humor fell flat when he realized that he really _did_ feel like it was looking at him, watching, scrutinizing... _hating._

That was ridiculous...something a crazy person would think.

"Lugosi."

Dad held out a box. "Gathering wool?" he asked.

"Yeah," Lugosi said and flashed a wan, tight-lipped smile, "just, uh, thinking about how good the house is gonna look after we fix it up."

Dad came out onto the tailgate, grabbed the metal handhold flanking the door, and leaned over the side, his eyes drinking in the facade of his new home. A grin touched the corners of his lips and he nodded as if in appreciation. "It's gonna be beautiful," he said with a metaphorical tear in his eye, and an instant before he continued, Lugosi winced because he knew exactly what he was going to say: "Just like your mother."

And there we have it, your awkward quote of the day brought to you by the letter 'D' for Dad, who's full of 'em. He shook his head, and Dad shrugged. "She is," he said.

"Maybe to you," Lugosi said, "to me she looks like...Mom."

His parents being lovey-dovey didn't bother him (much) but when he looked at them, he honestly didn't see beauty...or ugliness, for that matter. He saw his mother and father, and like most people, he sort of put his parents in a class of their own...above it all. He knew intellectually that Dad was a normal dude who got hard, and that Mom was a normal woman and...shiver. Why was he even thinking about this?

 _Because it's better than thinking about what a nutcase you are._

Well, see, actually…

 _Shut up, Skitz. Don't you have a president to shoot in a vain attempt to impress Jodie Foster?_

Ew, no, she's, like, eighty. Plus…

"That's how she's supposed to look," Dad said and clapped his shoulder.

Shoving all thoughts of insanity and Jodie Foster aside, he carried the box inside, stopping just inside the door to read the marker scrawled along the side. KITCHEN.

Why was the atmosphere so leaden? Every time he crossed the threshold, the difference was like night and day. Outside it was light and airy, in here it was heavy and stagnant like...like...he had nothing. The first word that came to mind was _void_ , but he wasn't sure if that quite fit. His mother was good with words (his father too, come to think of it), he, sadly, was not. _Void_ suggested a total absence...absence of light, sound, time, and air...so he'd go with it. Walking into 122 Lutz Drive was like walking into a void.

 _Man, you_ really _don't like this house, huh?_

He had no choice but to say that he didn't. He couldn't say why, so he would stick with the whole _resenting the move from my childhood home_ thing. Maybe the voices _were_ part of that...maybe his brain was pulling out all the stops to fool him into thinking he hated the house for non-petty reasons. _Dude, this place is haunted as fuck. Beg Mom and Dad to take us back to the apartment._

Yeah, that had to be it. He wasn't crazy, just a whiny teenager.

Whew.

Deep down he didn't know if he believed that or not, but he latched on anyway, like a drowning man onto a life preserver.

Feeling a _little_ better, he took the box into the kitchen and sat it on the counter. More were arrayed across the floor, some empty and others half filled. Mom stood on her tippy toes and sat a stack of plates in a cabinet.

She was humming.

That was a little odd. Despite her flat personality - which Lugosi had tried and failed to analyze from afar - she wasn't a walking corpse. She laughed, smiled, and even sang, she just had a higher happy threshold than most people. Some people handle pain really well, others don't. Some people do a little happy dance every time something good happens, and some only smile when the heavens part and God Himself comes down with one of those big checks the Publisher's Clearing House hands out. _Lucy Loud, you have just won a bajillion dollars. How do you feel?_

*Tiny smile*

See how happy this house makes them, brain? And you _really_ wanna be a snot about it? _Really?_ That apartment sucked anyway. It didn't even have a lake, you know what _does?_ This place. Look, see it out the window? It's gonna be lit this summer. Just you wait.

His brain didn't respond, which was encouraging.

Mom turned, went over to one of the boxes, and took out stack of cups. At the counter, she stood on her tippy toes again, then flat on her feet when she realized she couldn't reach.. "Can you put these away, please?" she asked.

"Yeah," he said and took them. He sat them on the top shelf and stepped away, his arms crossing thoughtfully over his chest. "How are you going to reach these when you want to get a drink?" he asked and gestured to the cabinet.

She tilted her head back to look up at him. "I'm not. You are."

Lugosi chuckled. "Raise my allowance and we'll talk."

"I'll ask your father," she said.

As if on cue, Dad came in with a box in his arms. "Ask his father what?"

"To raise his allowance."

Dad sat the box on the counter, leaned against it, and looked at him. Lugosi flashed a toothy smile. He wasn't serious when said it, but if Dad wanted to give him more money every week, awesome. "Raise it?" Dad asked incredulously, and Lugosi's smile fell. "He doesn't do anything. I should take it away entirely."

"That is _not_ true," Lugosi said and pointed at his father, "I do my chores and then some. I cooked dinner three times last week." Granted, it was frozen pizza, Hungry Mans (Men?), and Kraft macaroni and cheese because he wasn't a very good cook, but still, he fed the family when he didn't have to. That deserves recognition at _least._

Dad cocked his head and listened, then nodded. "Yeah. Okay, you want a raise?"

"Sure," Lugosi said, "but I was joking with Mom. More money's cool but whatever."

"I'll bump you up two dollars if you help with fixing the house up."

Lugosi opened his mouth to say that he was obviously going to help anyway, but stopped. That might sink his chances of getting this increase. _Oh, you were going to? Well...nevermind._ Best to play it cool. "Okay," he said at length, trying to sound as though it were a tall order but not _too_ tall for a reluctant but dedicated son like him. "I can do that."

Dad regarded him with a knowing light in his eye, like he figured he was going to help out and just wanted to mess with him. "Alright. Now help me finish unloading this truck. I wanna bring the dining room table in next."

"Let's do it."

It took almost two hours, but do it they did. The living room and kitchen were both littered with boxes and pieces of furniture sitting crooked and askace, left where they were dropped, and there were three fresh scratches in the wallpaper along the stairs because getting the mattresses up took grunting, sweating, straining, and violence...so, so much violence. Lugosi couldn't remember the last time his father used the word 'fuck' but during the epic battle to get his and Mom's queen up without snapping the railing off, he used a good five variations of it. He even called the treads a _fucking fuck_. Whoa, pops, 3edgy5me. Watch yourself on that edge, my friend. Don't cut your tongue on those envelope pushing oathes. "You guys practically sleep on top of each other," Lugosi grunted at one point; his bent back, arms, and legs were all quivering and he had to turn his head to the side to keep from getting a face full of mattress. "Why do you need such a big bed?"

"Because sometimes we get wild," Dad blurted.

Lugosi dropped his end of the mattress and puked in his mouth _just_ a little.

When they were done, Lugosi brought his bed frame to his room in pieces and assembled it while he waited for Dad to put _his_ together. Afterwards, he and Dad drove the U-Haul back to the rental agency while Mom followed in the car. Next, they went to Home Depot in Chippewa Falls, where Lugois poked around, bored out of his mind, while Mom and Dad moved up and down each aisle at the speed of middle age. He used part of the time to further reassure himself that he didn't really hear voices that morning and that his brain was just being a giant crybaby. That took a while, but nowhere near long enough, and he wound up absentmindedly flipping through carpet samples in a binder. Hmmm, that shag piece felt pretty nice. Stealing a quick look around, he lifted the book and rubbed it against his cheek, his eyes closing and a dreamy smile touching his lips. Oooh, that's nice. Maybe he should try to get Dad to buy him some for his room. Screw hardwood floors, _this_ is where it was at.

He opened his eyes and faltered. An older woman with frizzy red hair and fat rolls glared at him from behind her cart. Uh-oh. He flashed a castigated smile. "I really like this carpet."

She took a deep breath through flaring nostrils and stalked off, one wheel wobbling indignantly. Well, that was mildly embarrassing. Thank God it wasn't a hot girl, he might have blushed a little.

Done feeling up the free samples, he went off in search of his parents and found them literally three feet from where he left the twenty minutes before. He threw his head back and groaned. He didn't mean to be childish, but come, Home Depot sucks unless you're into building and remodelling. That's literally the only stuff they have. Boards, saws, bathrooms, and boredom.

Before he could slink away with his tail between this legs ( _that old greeter looks pretty cool...maybe he has some interesting stories about Operation: Iraqi Freedom_ ), Dad looked up and caught him. "Come here."

Hoping Dad was going to give him money to go somewhere else for a while (is there an arcade around here or something?) he went over and stood next to Mom, who closely studied two different types of lightbulb. "What's up?"

"What color do you wanna paint your room?" Dad asked. "Or do you want wallpaper?"

Now _there_ was a question Lugosi hadn't considered yet. He wasn't the world's biggest fan of floral print wallpaper, but the house was old and trying to imagine his room with a fresh coat of paint was hard. It's like that saying, when in Rome do as the Romans. Wallpaper in an old house seemed _right_. "Uhhh...probably wallpaper."

Dad nodded. "Come on. You and I will go see what they have while your mom finishes up here."

"Alright," Lugosi shrugged. He followed Dad on what turned into a fifteen minute long journey of father-son bonding and self-discovery while looking for the wallpaper guy. "Where _is_ this clown?" Dad asked and put his hands on his hips. They were standing by a pyramid of paint cans across from a line of toilets. Lugosi opened his mouth to reply but trailed off when a very attractive blonde girl about his age passed by. She wore a white tank top and plaid shorts that stopped well above her knees; her eyes were vibrant blue and her hair reminded him of warm spring sunshine. He was so captivated that he almost didn't notice her bulldog of a father waddling along beside her with his massive chest puffed out and his tree-trunk sized arms in an upside down U, fists well away from his body. Guy looked like a gorilla only not as handsome: Bald, red cheeks, pack of Ball Park franks masquerading as a neck.

Like any sixteen year old boy, Lugosi enjoyed looking at pretty girls, but he did _not_ enjoy getting his ass whipped by hot headed overprotective fathers, so he made it a point to turn away. _I wasn't looking, mister, honest._ It was just as well anyway because the paint guy finally decided to show up and they were off to the races. Twenty minutes later, Lugosi picked out a floral pattern just to move things along, then, when they were done, he carried a few rolls of it back to the cart...which seemed to have moved only a couple feet.

Sigh. He didn't wanna whine, but...are we _done_ yet? The house needs work, but not _that_ much work.

Hanging his head, he pulled a U-Turn and dragged himself back the way he came. Maybe he could find that girl he saw, smack her butt, and get into a knock down, drag out brawl with her father to pass the time. He wouldn't win, but if he was lucky he'd get clocked out and sleep through the rest of the trip. See, this is why teenagers get in trouble: Boredom. He was so :weary emoji: that he was _this_ close from hopping into a cart and surfing it through the store. _Cowabunga, man!_

Then he'd smash into a display of space heaters or something and go flying like Superman on his way to rescue Lois Lane. _Whoa, shit!_ *CRASH* Hey, they might kick him and his parents out over it, so it'd be a win, right?

He turned down an aisle and jumped back when he came face-to-face with Ramona Santiago. She looked extra grumpy today - thick, bushy brow angled in a V; downcast eyes dark and stormy like night in a Lord Lytton novel; lips turned down in a contemptuous frown that invited everyone who saw it to go fuck themselves and die. She came to a screeching halt, registered just who stood before her...and sneered, her jagged teeth like cannibal fangs specifically crafted to tear throats out and rip off heads. Lugosi's heart sank into his stomach and his spine went rigid.

Ramona Santiago did not scare Lugosi - his mother taught him to respect women and he did, but he'd totally overpower and kick the Hispanic girl's ass if he had to - but she, uh...well, he didn't know exactly _what_ she made him feel. Wary? Yeah, let's go with that. He felt wary around her, like the moment he let his guard down, she'd lean over, extend her jaw in a creepy, snakey fashion, and swallow him whole...or drag him away, spew acidic digestive juices over his quivering body, and then slowly consume him over a period of weeks.

Actually, that was kind of hot.

Not really.

"Watch where you're going," she hissed, then went around him, her hands clenched into fists. A swish of air displaced by her passage washed over him, but instead of smelling her normally ripe odor, or anything else for that matter, he _felt_ something.

Sadness.

Lugosi frowned.

Sometimes, mainly when he was younger but now too occasionally, he got feelings he couldn't explain. Everyone, his mother once told him, emits energy, and a very small percentage of the human population could pick up on that "aura". It was a sort of sixth sense that fell under the wide umbrella term ESP - extrasensory perception, the claimed reception of information not gained through the recognized physical senses, but sensed, rather, with the mind. Basically, psychic stuff. He didn't know if he believed in second sight or the shining, but sometimes his gut inexplicably told him something and more often than not, it was right. Right now, his gut told him that while Ramona Santiago looked mad, she wasn't, she was sad.

He remembered the previous afternoon and his vow to be her friend _because everyone needs a friend._

Didn't he say something about it being a suicide mission?

If he didn't, he should have...cuz it probably was.

She was at the end of the aisle and getting away. He had a split second decision to make: Was he going to try and befriend her, or was he going to slink away like a pussy? "Hey," he blurted. She tensed, took a deep breath, and turned around slowly, deliberately, reminding him of a movie slasher or something.

"What?" she asked shortly.

Okay. Now what?

Uh…

He blanked. Where do you start with someone who doesn't like you? Compliment their shoes? Make a self-deprecating joke? (I'm such a fag, you know that?). He had no idea, but the more he basked in her psychic emissions, the more resolved he became.

What should he say, though? "How's it going?" he finally said. He crossed his arms casually over his chest and set his feet far apart - just a guy shooting the breeze with a bud, Tim talking to Wilson over the back fence, free and easy and not chafing because _she's looking at me like she wants to strangle me. God, I feel so dumb._

Ramona glared at him and took a deep breath as if to calm her raging annoyance. "It's going fine," he said.

Now _that_ threw Lugosi off a little. He was expecting her to call him a mean name. Hey, this is easier than I thought it would be. "What, uh, brings _you_ here?" he asked.

"I work here," she said, her tone that of a woman dealing with a particularly stupid child. She tapped the orange apron covering her chest and lifted her brows patronizingly. "See?"

Oh. How'd I miss _that?_

Explains why she didn't cuss me out. She's on the clock.

Rolling right along, Lugosi nodded appreciatively. "That's cool. What department do you work in?"

"Lawn and garden," she said with strained patience,, "do you need help?"

"Well, no, but -"

She turned and walked away, disappearing around an end cap. Lugosi sighed and let his arms drop. Well, that was a step in the right direction. Sure, she fled the first chance she got, but while some people might see the glass as half empty, he saw it as half full; he kind of laid a foundation to build on, so...yay. _Hey, Ramona, remember when I ran into you at Home Depot? Good times._

Shoving his hands into his pockets, he went off in search of Mom and Dad, and found them a whole two aisles over looking at screws.

They were there another half hour before Dad announced that they had everything they needed. Oh, good, now we can leave. Thank God. Next time I'm staying home.

His stomach rumbled.

And packing a lunch.

After going through checkout, Mom pushed the cart past the automatic doors while Dad went off to pay a quick visit to the men's room. Lugosi followed Mom across the parking lot, his mind faraway. Behind him, something dropped to the ground with a muffled thump, and he glanced over his shoulder to see his old pal Ramona struggling to get a bag of fertilizer onto a handcart, her arms quivering and her face clenched. As he watched, it fell from her grasp and plopped to the pavement. She heaved a frustrated breath, stood, and put her hands on her hips.

Check it out: My time to shine.

He walked over, and Ramona looked up at him. He flashed a big, friendly smile and she rolled her eyes. _Not this fag again._ His step faltered, but he pressed on. "Hey," he said and nodded to the bag on the ground. "Need some help?"

"No."

Short, sharp, and to the point, like a prison shiv. She bent, grabbed the bag, and strained to lift it; teeth baring, eyes squeezing closed, freckled cheeks turning an alarming shade of fire truck red. With a gasp, she dropped it again and slapped her hand to the small of her back. "Shit," she hissed through her teeth.

Mom taught Lugosi that when a woman said no she meant no, but this was _kiiiiind_ of different; without asking her consent, he stooped, picked up the bag, and laid it on the cart. Ramona glowered at him as he did it, and when he turned to her, she drew an angry breath through flaring nostrils. "I didn't need your help," she said, and he thought he heard a wounded inflection in her voice, as though his helping hurt her pride.

"I know," he said, humoring her, "I wanted to."

Her brow lowered suspiciously. "Are you hitting on me?"

Lugosi sputtered. "N-No," he said quickly and shook his head, "I just...you know...I just...thought you needed help."

"Well I don't," she said. "Especially not from _you_."

Me?

What's wrong with _me?_

"I didn't mean to offend - "

Ramona held up her hand and turned away. "Just fuck off. Weirdo."

Lugosi knew when to give up, and right now, he gave up and walked away. Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither would his friendship with Ramona Santiago; at some point, though, they'd be buds and the sadness he sensed in her would be all gone.

Well, maybe not _all_ gone, but having a friend to talk to about your problems helped, and he was pretty sure that she had a whole host of problems.

After Home Depot, he, Mom, and Dad stopped at Red Lobster for lunch. By the time they got home, he felt pretty good...until he saw the house sitting in its spot by the lake; his stomach turned and something like sour distaste went through him.

He ignored it.

And planned to keep doing so until he never felt that way again.

Even if it took forever.


	4. Shadows

Lincoln hated dusting, but as sundown approached, that's exactly what he found himself doing in the second floor hall. Lugosi was dusting the living room and dining room, and Lucy was making dinner - when they got back from town, the power was on and she insisted on breaking in the kitchen even though no one was hungry. She wasn't normally this enthusiastic about cooking, but she was excited because it was another dimension of settling in...just like making love in it...and taking a giant dump in the toilet. Which, come to think of it, he hadn't done yet. His stomach gurgled and he patted it. _Soon._

He lifted the feather duster over his head and ran it along the little ledge over Lugosi's door; motes and particles kicked up and hung in the air like smoke; his nose and the back of his throat both tickled, and he sneezed.

That was the last of it, everything was done but…

With a gulp, he looked up at the attic door.

Twice...he and Lucy saw the house twice before they closed...and they went into the attic neither time. They were so focused on other things (like being giddy over the fact they were buying an amazing home at a basement bargain) that checking the attic didn't even cross their minds. Now, after satiating their house lust, he was thinking clearly and _Jesus God, what's up there?_ Sharon the realtor said that it was filled with the original owner's belongings. What was his name? The one who built it then went bankrupt in the Crash of '29 - that guy. That was almost 120 years ago. Other people had lived here since, so at least it wasn't filled with rot and ruin.

He hoped.

God, he hoped.

Leaning the duster against the wall, he went over to the hatch and stared up at it, intimidated. He had to go up there sometime - maybe later. He was high on happiness and felt like he was walking on air...it was nice...and he did not want to be shot down by discovering his attic, which he stupidly didn't check during the showing, was decomposing like a body in a crypt. He should wait.

On the other hand, the responsible thing to do would be to look at it as soon as possible; what if the ceiling collapsed and Lucy or Lugosi got hurt?

That was probably not going to happen...but it's better to be safe than sorry. He reached up and yanked the cord. The stairs unfolded and the musky scent of close space filled his nostrils. He sniffed but didn't smell decay.

Hoping for the best but preparing for the worst, he climbed up, wincing at the way the rungs creaked under his weight. At the top, he stood to his full height and looked around: Boxes, chests, end tables, trunks, and other assorted junk lined a narrow walking path, six feet high in places and looming from the shadows like monsters from the night. Late afternoon sun cascaded through a window directly ahead of him and provided faint illumination. Darkness nestled between the bare plank rafters - gray and splintered with age - and the stale atmosphere swirled with dust. It was hot, far hotter than he imagined it would be, and sweat sprang to his forehead; he wiped it absently away with he back of his hand and walked along the aisle, looking left and right for signs of structural trouble but seeing none...at least none that were glaringly obvious.

More dust disturbed by his passage plumed into the air, and he sneezed, a wad of snot shooting from his nose and into the dark, never to be seen again. Whoops.

At the end of the aisle, an antique roll top desk sat against the wall flanking the window. As he passed, he glanced idyly down and noticed a book lying on its surface, small, leatherbound, and resembling a ledger or journal. At the window, he rubbed a circle in the dirty pane with the sleeve of his shirt and peered out - the cobalt lake lapped against the muddy shoreline, whispering aquatic secrets that would drive one mad if they listened and discerned.

Everything seemed okay. He'd have to come back with a flashlight and maybe a helper to give it a really thorough exam, but for now he was satisfied. He turned from the window and started back the way he came, his eyes falling once more on the ledger. He stopped, hesitated, then picked it up, his curiosity getting the better of him. He opened the cover and held it up to the window to see better: Tight, pragmatic script marched across a page yellowed with years. _March 10, 1928,_ it was headed. The first line read: _As a sensible man, I do not believe in such things as tales of spirits, but as of late, I've begun to wonder…_

Lincoln's heart inexplicably jagged. He flipped through the book, the cinnamon like smell of old paper fleeting in his nose. The last page was dated January 30, 1930.

He remembered Sharon the realtor's history lesson as she lead him and Lucy up the stairs: 122 Lutz drive was built in 1928 by a rich businessman from Chicago named...he couldn't recall...then sold when he lost all of his money in the stock market crash. This _had_ to be his.

 _Tales of spirits._

Lincoln frowned. The book felt suddenly slimey in his hands, but he found himself wanting to read more...to find out what the author meant by _tales of spirits_.

He wavered for a moment - though what's-his-name was a good 100 years dead, reading his diary felt _wrong_ \- then closed the book, clutched it tight, and left the attic, intent on putting the tome away for later consumption. In his and Lucy's room, he dropped it onto the nightstand and stared down at it for a moment. He started to reach for it again when Lucy called up the stairs. "Dinner's ready."

Lincoln let his hand drop. Later. He would read it later.

Downstairs, Lucy and Lugosi sat at the dining room table, plates and glasses in front of them. Lugosi favored his room with indecision, as though he wasn't sure if he wanted it or not, and Lucy wore a tiny, self-satisfied smile. _We're having our first dinner in our new home,_ it said. Lincoln sat at the place she set for him and looked at the plate. Meatloaf with mashed potatoes and green beans. The smell found his nose and he drew it deep into his nostrils, his stomach rumbling despite being full less than two hours ago. Lucy wasn't a very good cook (she was worse even than Lugosi), but her meatloaf was somehow the best.

"I made your favorite," she pointed out.

"Thank you," he said and picked up his fork. "I didn't think I'd be hungry again."

"I was going to cook either way," she stated. "I was excited."

For someone so dour, she was awfully like a little girl sometimes...which was charming if a bit mystifying. Lucy was, and always had been, an enigma to him. He knew her thoughts, emotions, likes, kinks, and habits as well as he did his own, but he couldn't explain why she was the way she was. As a child, she displayed keen psychic abilities that peaked and then began to diminish when she was thirteen; by the time she was eighteen, they were gone. He couldn't help but wonder if they had anything to do with her personality; he also wondered just exactly who she was sometimes. Beyond being a wonderful wife and mother, that is.

Lugosi prodded his meat with the tines of his fork like a boy poking a dead frog, his lips turning down in something approaching a grimace. "I'm not hungry," he said plainly.

"You don't have to eat," Lucy said, "but you do have to hang out with us."

The boy shrugged and sat back in his chair. "Alright," he said. Like his mother, Lugosi was even-tempered and, at times, flat. Things rarely bothered him and a lot of the time, he just went where the flow of life took him like a leaf on the wind. They expected him to share Lucy's 'powers' but so far he did not, though Lucy suspected he was a sensitive - more easily able to _sense_ thoughts, emotions, "psychic auras", and the _emanations of the universe,_ as Lucy put it, than other people. A full blown psychic could, theoretically, see, hear and experience past or future events whereas a sensitive would only feel. If a psychic walked into a house where someone was murdered, they may be able to view the event in their mind and/or otherwise receive intimate details. A sensitive would only _feel_ that something bad had happened.

Lucy based her assertion that Lugosi was a sensitive primarily on the fact that as a child, he would often find lost things - car keys, toys, Lincoln's wallet once - and when asked how he knew where it was, he'd shrug and say _I felt like it was over there._ He also had flashes of insight into things that he knew nothing about. He once told Lincoln out of the blue that _your dad doesn't like you_ (he'd never met his grandparents or aunts at that point). More than once, he'd talk about a certain episode of a TV show or a certain song, then moments later it would come on. _Ha, knew it_ , he'd say.

Based on the evidence, Lincoln had to agree with her - there was more going on than a random series of coincidences. He didn't do it much anymore, though; every once in a while he'd shine, but those instances came fewer and farther between, and they were resigned to his powers waning the way Lucy's did.

Oh well. Lincoln loved his son even if he _was_ a failed psychic, just like he loved Lucy...though he was kind of salty that neither one could help him win the lottery.

"...homework?" Lucy asked.

Lugosi nodded, arms crossed. "Yeah, I'm gonna do it later." He took a drink from a can of Coke and sighed. "Or maybe tomorrow. I'm kind of tired."

"You look pale," Lucy said. Anyone else wouldn't notice the hint of motherly concern, but Lincoln did. Like all of her emotions, the expression was muted, but not the sensation itself.

Slowly, Lugosi shook his head. "I'm just really tired. Spending five hours at Home Depot will do that to you."

Lincoln scoffed. "It wasn't _that_ long." He had to think for a moment, though; was it? They were there for a while, he knew that much. "It was more like two and a half."

"Which is like five anywhere else," Lugosi countered, "because it's so boring."

"No it's not," Mom said, "Home Depot's cool."

For a moment Lugosi looked at her strangely, then shook his head. "If you say so. They had some pretty soft carpet samples. Those were nice." His face crinkled. "I meant to ask if I can get some carpet but I forgot."

Lincoln took a bite of his meatloaf. "You can if you want. But you and I have to install it."

The boy cocked his head in consideration. "Uhh, maybe. We got a lotta stuff to do already, right?"

Yes, in fact, they did, though none of it was major. "Painting, mainly," Lincoln said. "The bathroom door needs new hinges, gutters have to be cleaned, the floors finished..." he thought for a second, flipping through his running mental to-do list. "Not all _that_ much."

"Sounds good," Lugosi said and stretched, a yawn escaping his lips. "I'm super excited. Can I please be excused?"

Lucy nodded. "Yes, you can go now." There was a touch of reluctance in her voice, as though she didn't want him to go just yet.

He got up, took his plate into the kitchen, then came back and went upstairs, leaving them alone with the pervasive silence. Lincoln took a bite of his mashed potatoes and listened - it was deeper than that which he was used to, more cloying. In the apartment, there were a thousand noises to keep you company, from the muffled voices of the next door neighbors through the too thin walls to the traffic sounds on Railroad Ave. Here, between a field and a lake, there was only the wind and the crickets, neither of which were loud enough to be heard here.

Peace, quiet, and privacy were exactly what they were searching for when they started looking last year, but he never anticipated it being quite _this_ peaceful. It was a thick, living thing that rushed like blood in his ringing ears. The air seemed too heavy now and tasted funny in his mouth. He took a bite and chewed, the click of his jaw muscles and the grinding of his teeth giving him pause.

"I wanna get the living room set up," Lucy said, her voice as abrupt and loud as a bomb blast; Lincoln started and nearly dropped his fork. She took a drink from her glass and sat it down with a clunk that lingered too long. "Then our room."

The living room was still in a state of disarray, teetering stacks of boxes here and there, the TV on the floor, the entertainment system blocking the window, the couch slanted. It wouldn't take much to put it to rights, and he ordered most of their bedroom before they left. There was not a lot to do then, but for some reason he felt suddenly drained and the prospect of bending, lifting, and straining made him dizzy. "How about we just relax a little?" he suggested and took a bite. "Enjoy our first full evening in our new home."

"The living room is a disaster," she deadpanned as though that was answer enough.

He nodded his agreement. 'Yeah, and tomorrow it won't be. We have all the time world to settle in. No need to rush it."

She regarded him blankly for a long time before her lips creaked up in a tepid smile that was beautiful despite its torpor. "Okay," she relented, "snuggling on the couch does sound good."

Shortly, they took their plates into the kitchen, cleared them, and did the dishes side-by-side, one washing and the other drying, a nightly tradition that stretched back to their first place together. Sometimes they did it in companionable silence, and sometimes they talked and giggled like school kids in love, but they always did it together. For Lincoln's part, he had come to live by a simple motto: Everything's better with Lucy.

Done, they made their way into the living room, where they curled up on the couch, Lincoln sitting up with his arm around her shoulder and Lucy resting her head and hand on his chest. She liked to listen to his heartbeat when they did this, something that once unnerved him until she told him how comforting it was. Whew. _I always thought you were planning on ripping it out and eating it._ That was a joke; she wouldn't do that.

Probably.

"This is nice," she said, voice thick with sleep.

Lincoln kissed the top of her head and breathed in the warm fragrance of her hair. "It is."

After a while, they got up, turned out the lights, and went upstairs. In their room, Lucy changed into her nightgown while Lincoln brushed his teeth in the master bath. He was halfway done when he noticed a pattern in the streaks on the mirror. Knitting his brows, he stopped, toothbrush jutting from his mouth, and leaned in, his hands gripping the edge of the sinktop.

They looked like words, as though someone had written a message in the steamy condensation of a past shower.

He squinted but couldn't make them out. He opened the medicine cabinet a little and looked at them from the side.

 _Help me._

At least that's what he thought they were. His heart skipped a beat and he studied them more closely. They were faded and ghost-like, but the more he looked, the more sure he was that that was indeed the message. _Help me._

He recoiled and stood to his full height, the toothbrush falling from his mouth and clattering to the basin. The medicine cabinet swung closed and the reflection staring back at him was haggard and wan, its eyes wide with fear.

It was seeing his own image that snapped him out of it. Jesus, he looked like he was honestly scared...over something someone drew on a bathroom mirror.

Untensing, he let out a sardonic chuckle and thought back to all the things Lucy had ever written on foggy mirrors while he was showering. He'd cut the spray, open the curtain, and come face to face with REDRUM or I'M GOING TO EAT YOUR SKIN. Sometimes she'd be standing there like an artist with her latest creation, her hands behind her back and a glint in her eyes. "Boo," she'd say.

 _You're losing it, Linc,_ he told himself, but the back of his neck tingled regardless.

He picked up the brush, rinsed it off, and put it in the holder. He cut the overhead light and started to leave, but caught the words from the corner of his eye, half-revealed in the soft glow of Lucy's bedside lamp. Silly or not, his stomach flipped.

Pursing his lips, he turned the sink of, cupped his hand under the flow, and splashed water onto the glass, then wiped it off with a hand towel.

There. All gone.

Still, as he went back into the bedroom, those two words ricocheted through his mind like bullets. _Help me. Help me. Help me._

Lucy sat up on her side of the bed, a paperback novel resting in her lap. Lincoln remembered the ledger he found in the attic. _Tales of spirits._

Twice in his life, he fought the forces of darkness. To other men, tales of spirits were fantasy, something to entertain over a Stephen King book or a Wes Craven movie then to forget afterwards. To Lincoln Loud, they were either fact or a strong possibility. He didn't know what John Arbogast (that was his name) meant by that line of text, but he was intensely interested in finding out.

He climbed into bed, slipped under the covers, and leaned back against the headboard. He reached for his reading glasses, put them on, then went to pick up the book, but stopped.

It was gone.

Lincoln blinked in confusion. He knew he left it on the table. Didn't he?

Yeah, he distinctly recalled laying it down next to his glasses because he started to drop it _onto_ his glasses but corrected himself at the last moment for fear of breaking them. Huh. He leaned over and looked into the space between the desk and the bed, but it wasn't there. Leaning over even more, he checked behind, expecting to find it wedged between the stand and the wall, but it wasn't there either. Huh. "Did you move the book I had over here?" he asked over his shoulder.

Lucy turned a page with a crisp sound. "No, I didn't," she said.

He got up and checked on the other side, thinking maybe it was knocked off and landed on the floor, but no, the floor was empty and free of clutter. Dropping to his knees, he checked under the bed and along the baseboard.

The book was nowhere.

Rocking back on his knees, Lincoln's forehead wrinkled in puzzlement. Maybe Lugosi took it. Walking into someone else's room and taking something without permission wasn't like him, but what was the alternative? It sprouted legs and walked off by itself?

He got to his feet and went to Lugosi's door, which stood open. The boy sat hunched at his desk writing in a notebook by lamplight. "Hey, did you take the book off my desk?" Even as he spoke the words his doubt that Lugosi was the culprit deepened.

Lugosi looked over his shoulder, arched his brows, and shook his head. "No. Wasn't me."

Where the hell was it, then?

"Alright," Lincoln said absently and went back to his room. He sat on the bed and sighed. Maybe he _didn't_ he leave it on the nightstand. Maybe he unthinkingly sat it somewhere else. He mentally retraced his steps and decided that he couldn't have: He went directly from here to the dining room table, and he was certain that he didn't bring the journal with him.

This didn't make sense.

 _Tales of spirits._

His head spun. No, that couldn't be it, he cautioned himself. He was jumping at shadows. He'd find it somewhere tomorrow and laugh at himself. _Oh, that's right, I remember now_. That happened a lot. Normal.

Totally and completely normal.

* * *

Lugosi laid his pencil down and sat back from the desk with a burdened sigh. He was almost done with his homework and wanted to finish it, but he didn't feel good. His stomach was heavy and queasy and a twinge above his left eye threatened to turn into a full blown headache. He ran his fingers through his hair, which was down now, and scratched his head. He hoped he didn't have food poisoning; it could be a false memory, but now that he was thinking about it, those crab cakes he had for dinner _did_ taste kind of funny.

It was by sheer coincidence that it didn't start until he got home.

He threw his head back and darted his gaze left and right - a circle of shadows pressed incessantly around the edge of the light cast by the lamp, waiting to flood hungrily in the moment it was turned off.

Why did they have _presence?_ Shadows aren't supposed to have presence...aren't supposed to feel like they're alive.

The hairs on his arms raised and the twinge in his head flared. He rubbed his temple with his fingertips and bared his teeth against the hot, sickening pain. Usually when he had a headache, he took a long, hot shower, but the thought of standing up made him tired. He glanced at his bed, pushed flush with one wall because that's how he liked it, and wondered if his legs would even support him long enough to get there.

Only one way to find out.

Eh, in a minute.

He puffed his cheeks and blew a slow exhalation. Wasn't he listening to music?

While working on anything, be it school work or house work, he did it to music. It was kind of like a numbing agent and made the sting of mundanity a little easier to bear. When he sat down, he set his iPod next to the lamp and picked his way through equations to Exodus, Metallica, Rob Zombie, and Cradle of Filth, the crashing cacophony of blistering guitars, slamming drums, and growling vocals closing out the world around him.

Now silence so loud it made his ears ring held sway and had for a while. He was so focused on his work and the sickly nausea twisting through him that he must not have noticed when it stopped. He picked the iPod up and hit the button on the side, but the screen didn't light up.

Ever since Mom stepped on it, it hadn't been acting right. He needed a new one, and those things weren't cheap.

Dropping it back onto the desk, he drew a deep breath, got up, and went over to the bed, where he sat heavily on the edge and hung his throbbing head. It was dumb and irrational, but he was coming to really dislike this house. He tried telling himself it was being resentful over leaving the apartment, but he didn't think it was. The atmosphere didn't feel right and the smell...he couldn't put his finger on it, but _something_ permeated the air, so slight as to be almost indetectable. It wasn't mold or mildew or rot, it was...he didn't know, but it was really starting to bother him. That's probably where this feeling sick crap came from, not crab cakes.

The sudden feeling of being watched came over him and he looked up, his eyes narrowing suspiciously. The shadows teemed alone, not moving but giving off the impression of motion nonetheless. A cold, steely band tightened around his heart and his breath locked in his lungs. It was crazy, but he could sense eyes watching him from the darkness with malicious intent.

Insistent feelings of being monitored and persecuted are two major symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia...and the earliest too. No one goes from relatively normal to boarding up all their doors and windows to keep out the spy cameras overnight. It's a slow progression...one that often beings in the sufferer's teenage years.

Say...at sixteen.

All the same thoughts and fears from earlier came rushing back and his stomach clutched. He pressed his palm to his clammy forehead and tried to will them away but couldn't. Was he going crazy? Did leaving the apartment somehow trigger an underlying mental illness? He didn't even care that much, though. If it bothered him _that_ much subconsciously, it would have to bubble up and seep into his conscious mind at least a little; he'd have to _feel_ the resentment knotting in his chest, have to actively _disdain_ the idea of moving. He did not, though.

When his parents started looking for a house last year, he was largely indifferent. He was worried he'd have to change schools and leave his friends behind, but, knowing how important communication is in relationships, familial or otherwise, he brought his concerns to Mom and Dad and they readily agreed to stay in Royal County. Problem solved. When they told him about 122 Lutz Drive, he was stoked. He wasn't exactly happy that it was so far from the center of town - he liked being able to walk everywhere he needed or wanted to go - but Mom and Dad were pretty liberal with letting him borrow the car, so it wasn't _that_ big a deal.

Overall, he didn't mind the move, he really didn't.

Something wasn't right, however, and it had to be in his head because what _else_ could it be?

The house itself?

He looked up into the writhing darkness, the feeling of being watched stronger now. He nervously licked his lips and scanned the room, certain that if he looked hard enough, he would see something - a gallery of white, ghostly faces maybe, or Zelda from _Pet -_

Savagely, he shut that thought out. He didn't know what to think right now, so he'd sleep on it. Best thing to do when your mind's all wound up is let it rest and untangle. That's what Dad always said, and though it might not be cool for a sixteen year old to admit this, his father was a wise man. Cool too. For a middle aged guy.

Lugosi kicked out of his shoes and whipped his T-shirt off, tossing it onto the floor. He weighed taking his pants off, but didn't have the energy, so he stretched out on top of the blanket. He realized he left the lamp on, but he wasn't getting up to turn it off.

Even _if_ he had the energy.

Lacing his hands over his chest, he stared up at the ceiling and waited for sleep to take him, certain that he would lie awake and plagued by self-doubt.

Instead, he dropped off in minutes.

On the desk, the lamp went dark with a click...and the shadows rushed in.

* * *

On his second night in his new home, Lincoln Loud woke suddenly in the dark, his heart pounding and his naked torso slathered in cold sweat. Normally, he swam gradually and reluctantly from the depths of sleep, but not now; it was as though a switch had been thrown - one second he was unconscious, the next he was fully awake, his mind clear and his eyes wide open. The dream he was having before rousing lingered in his brain like morning fog, and for a moment he entertained it, his eyes squinting slightly in concentration. It was so vivid he could still feel the soft, cool dirt under his feet, the stale wind against his face, the splintered banister trailing his palm as he descended the basement stairs, drawn to a section of wall like steel to a magnet. _The barrier was not meant to be crossed,_ a voice rapsed from his right, and his heart crushed in terror. Bright red light shone through the cracks between the stones, and the smell of decay swept into his nostrils. His heart thundered and his knees trembled.

Something was in the wall.

And it wanted out.

That was when he opened his eyes and crossed into the land of the living. A tingle raced down his spine and the night grew malevolent, the darkness hostile. He glanced at the clock on the nightstand, the soft green glow putting him in mind of corpse light...whatever that was.

3:00am.

He turned to Lucy; she lay on her side, the blanket pulled halfway to her bare shoulder. Her back gently rose and fell.

Taking a deep breath, Lincoln sat up and swung his legs out from under the cover. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he raked his hand through his hair and swallowed against a sandpaper throat. The heavy feeling of dread from the dream remained with him and he stopped his hand mid-reach for the lamp, surprised at the panic beginning to claw at his soul. He was a grown man, almost forty, but in that moment, he was a small child again, too afraid of the dark, and what it hid, to even move lest he attract something's attention. He imagined a twisted-faced ghoul hiding under the bed, its hooked fingers creeping across the floor toward his bare, unguarded ankle, and caustic terror erupted in his chest. He hurriedly snapped the lamp on, filling the room with soft, amber light, and forced himself to stay where he was instead of blasting up and running aimlessly away.

In his mind's eye, he saw himself fleeing not out the front door, but into the basement.

The urge to get up and go down there gripped him and he almost stood, but stayed himself. _Just to check,_ a voice in his head seemed to say. _Make sure everything's okay._

But it _was_ okay. His dream was just that, a dream. There was nothing down there, nothing hidden behind the stonework.

He went back to the red light filtering through the cracks, pulsating like the throb of a beating heart. He could distinctly feel its heat on his cheeks, could hear the low, teeth-vibrating thrum that accompanied it like a vampire's trusty familiar, could even _smell_ it...a ripe, sickly-sweet odor like rotting meat.

What _was_ it?

Nothing! It was nothing. A dream. Dreams don't make very much sense sometimes, and this was one of those times. When Sharon the realtor showed him and Lucy the house, he was uneasy down there. He didn't know why but he was, so it only seemed right that he would have a nightmare about it.

No, no, he knew _exactly_ what it was: Symbolic of his worries that something was wrong with the house. It wasn't a pressing concern, especially after checking the attic and finding it sound, but it was undeniably in the back of his mind. A million and one things can go wrong with a house the size of theirs, and his brain took that anxiety and turned it into a nightmare in which something _was_ wrong...something he could neither fix nor explain.

Talk about scary.

Feeling a little better, he got up and started into the hall, but remembered that he and Lucy had their own bathroom now and went to turn around...but kept going instead, his feet carrying him to the top of the stairs as if of their own violation. At the top, he stared down into the sea of shadows below, his hand tightening around the rail. _Just check...go and check. Maybe something's wrong._ Those thoughts came from the ether, and he licked his dry lips; it was almost like they came not from within, but from without, spoken by an external source, a dark siren's call that his body yearned with feverish intensity to follow.

Was he still dreaming?

The possibility seemed remote, but the moment it occurred to him, he knew that it must be so. He was lost in the folds of another nightmare, this one more vivid than the last. He crossed to the bathroom on numb feet, used it, and went back to bed, his chest tingling with a sensation of the uncanny. Just a dream, he told himself, it's all just a dream. He closed his eyes and sleep took him almost instantly.

Deep below, in the basement, a thin, pulsing red light bathed the walls in an eerie glow.


	5. Drawn

Lugosi dragged through Monday morning in a state of listlessness that was completely unlike him. Some guys are zombies when they first wake up (and for hours afterwards), but not him; he greeted each day like Spongebob Squarepants - bursting with positive energy and ready for whatever life threw at him.

Alright, that wasn't exactly true, but he never, ever shuffled around like a corpse.

Today he did, though.

Sitting in second period math, staying awake was a struggle, and keeping his head up took so much effort he almost collapsed. He didn't know why he felt so drained - he got at least seven hours of sleep the night before - but he was, and he didn't like it. At lunch, he bought a Monster from the vending machine next to the bathroom and drank it slowly, consciously trying to imble and utilize every single molecule of energy in it.

Instead, he gave himself indigestion.

Sigh.

Sitting at the cool kids' table and fighting to stay awake, he gazed across the lunch room and people watched. The jocks laughed and roasted each other ( _all white hats stand up_ ); the homeboys blared rap from their phones; and the skaters...yawn. Maybe I'll put my head down and…

Ramona Santiago came out of stage left, a tray in her hands, and sat at an empty table facing the double doors to the gym. She looked angry, as always, her brows low and her eyes seething with evident disdain for life. Picking up her fork, she crossed her legs, tossed her hair, and stabbed a piece of salisbury steak like it just insulted her mother. He could feel her from here, a dark, crackling tide of negative energy; he felt it flowing into him, and a deep frown creased his face.

I should just stay here and let her be. Too tired to play rent-a-friend.

On second thought, getting my ass verbally (and maybe physically) kicked might wake me up a little.

Getting up, he walked over, ducking around a kid in a striped shirt. The closer he got, the more powerful her aura; it filled him like gas filling an empty tank, and the strangest sensation overcame him. He didn't know how, but he was somehow siphoning her emotional energy or something.

Strange.

But after being dead on his feet all day, it was nice too.

She glanced up as he sat across the table, her mouth stopping in mid-chew and her eyes narrowing dangerously. Her effervescence rolled off of her like heat from a fire, metaphorically warming Lugosi's flesh, and emotions that were not his own surged through him, chiefly among them fear. Dull and muted, but fear nonetheless.

Afraid. She was afraid of him.

That didn't come as a surprise - he'd already pegged her as being scared shitless of people because, perhaps, people treated her poorly in the past. A sharp pang of sympathy rippled through him and he seriously considered getting up and leaving her alone. He couldn't, though; call him what you want, but he wasn't the kind of person to walk away and leave someone lying on the ground in a pool of blood...even if that blood was symbolic and they were sitting up rather than lying down.

Swallowing hard, she took a deep breath through her nose. "What the fuck is your problem?" she demanded. "You got a crush on me? Your boyfriends not doing it for you?"

On the surface, she wanted him to go away. He felt that as clearly as he felt warm autumn sunshine on his back. Deep down, though, he didn't think she did. "Just wanted to say hi," he said. "You looked kind of lonely over here." He lifted his arms to indicate the vast, empty table around them.

"I'm not," she said. She darted her eyes to her tray and jabbed another piece of beef with her fork. She looked up at him and rolled her eyes. "Go away. I don't hang with fags."

For some reason that made Lugosi laugh. Maybe he was a masochist. "Come on, you don't even know me. I might be pretty cool."

"You're not."

Ow.

She slipped her fork into her mouth and chewed, looking pointedly down at her food. Lugosi watched her and tried to come up with a response. Would it be best to be straightforward, or to beat around the bush?

He mentally flipped a coin. Heads, small talk. Tails, he'd get serious.

It spun through the air and came down on tails.

Well, if you insist…

"You really care what people think about you, don't you?" he asked.

Ramona tensed and looked up at him. "No," she said, "I don't give a shit _what_ people think about me. Now leave me alone." Only that was a lie, she did. She cared what they thought about her teeth and her ratty clothing, cared when they made fun of her, cared far, far more than she should.

Ignoring the last part, he nodded. "Good. You shouldn't. People can be cruel sometimes. And judgemental. And stuff like that. Don't let them get to you."

She furrowed her brows and tilted her head to one side in confusion. "Who the fuck are _you,_ Doctor Phil?"

"No," he said, "I'm just a guy who wants to be your friend."

For a moment she gaped at him...then laughed in the back of her throat. "So you _do_ have a crush on me. What a loser. I'd rather lick the bathroom floor than go out with you."

"I'm being serious," he said, "I just wanna be friends. Hey, we don't even have to be actual friends, just acquaintances."

"Why?" she asked.

"Because your bullying's getting to me and I want you to stop," he said and grinned to show that he was joking. "I figure if we're cool, you'll leave me alone. Stop hitting me with those nasty zingers."

Ramona shook her head and went back to her lunch. After a moment, Lugosi asked, "How long have you worked at Home Depot?"

She ignored him.

"Two years?"

Ignored.

"One?"

Ignored.

"Saturday was your first day?"

"Six months," she sighed. "Okay? I've been working there six months."

He sensed he was wearing her down. At this rate, they'd be chatting excitedly about cute boys in no time. "Cool," he said with a nod. "Do you like it?"

"It's fine," she grumbled and took a bite of her food. Now we're _really_ making headway; see how she replied clearly and directly to my question? This is how you open a dialogue, folks. Or maybe not. See, I'm picking up her energy, maybe...she's picking up on mine too. I don't know, metaphysics and the parapsychological aren't really my strong suit; I know a little, but not a lot. Either way, it looks like we're getting somewhere.

"Did you choose to work in the garden department or did they stick you there?"

She sipped her milk and glowered down at her tray. "Chose." Maybe it was imagination, but her face seemed to waver in uncertainty, as though she were fighting a battle with herself and starting to lose. "I like being outside."

"Makes sense," Lugosi said. "I'd rather be outside too. My dad works in an office and I pity the guy so hard. Sitting at a desk? Yeah, no." Something occurred to him. "Do you like gardening and stuff? Like, on your free time?"

That's a reasonable assumption to make, right? Maybe she just wanted to be outside, or maybe she was into plants and stuff. Lugosi had a fern once. He called it Freddy - you know, Freddy the Fern? Yeah, it was lame, but whatever. Anyway, it died after, like, two weeks.

Dipping her fork into her mashed potatoes, Ramona sighed. "If you wanna ask me out, grow the balls and fucking do it so I can turn you down already."

"I'm not trying to ask you out, I promise," he said, "I just wanna get to know you better."

"Why?"

Lugosi didn't have an easy answer for that, so he spread his hands. "Why not?"

She very easily could have gotten up and left, but she didn't. Surly or not, her staying where she was told him that he was right in his assessment. She was scared of people...but way down deep in her soul, she still cultivated a spark-like flicker of hope. Lugosi's pity grew, and he found himself wondering if teasing was the _only_ bad thing people had done to her.

Sighing, she shook her head. "Whatever, fag." She picked up her roll, broke it into two, then ate one piece looking down at her tray.

For a moment, Lugosi didn't speak, then: "What do you do for fun? Besides pick on people?"

"Nothing," she said, mouth full and voice muffled.

"So you just pick on people?" he leaned forward and folded his arms on the edge of the table. "I don't really do that, but I can try." He glanced over his shoulder, spotted Paul watching him quizzically ( _why are you hanging out with Ramona the bitch?)_ and waved. "Hey, Paul, I don't like your shirt."

Paul blinked in confusion. He wore a plaid short-sleeve button up the likes of which he wore everyday. Lugosi turned to Ramona, who favored him with a blank stare, and grinned. "See? Gottem."

"That's not how you pick on someone," she said.

Lugosi blinked as if in surprise. He knew that, but come one, he couldn't go _too_ hard. "Sure it is," he said. "His grandmother bought him that shirt and he loves his grandmother, so that was pretty devastating."

He _hoped_ she'd buy it, but from the look on her face, she didn't. "Yeah, I'm not very good at picking on people. Sorry. I tried."

Rolling her eyes, Ramona turned in her seat and faced the cool kids' table. "Hey, fatso!" she called. There was no doubt she was talking to Kayden; he glanced over his shoulder and she tilted her head back. "Nice breasts."

His face turned red and he whipped away, fat jiggling under his gray T-shirt. Lugosi winced because, wow, that was fucking harsh. Ramona turned to Lugosi and smirked coldly. " _That's_ how you pick on someone."

"That...that was brutal," Lugosi admitted. "You know, he's really sensitive about his weight. That kind of stuff really hurts his feelings."

Ramona shrugged. "I don't give a fuck."

"Why, though?"

She opened her mouth to reply, seemed to reconsider, then looked back down at her tray. "Just leave me alone," she mumbled. "I don't need your pity."

Lugosi flinched. Well...yes, he did pity her, but that was beside the point. "I don't pity you," he lied soberly. "I just…" how should he continue? "I was serious when I said you looked kind of lonely over here. You don't really hang out anyone, and you seem alright. I mean...you come up with some pretty sick barbs. That means you're quick." He tapped his temple. "Quick people are cool."

"It comes natural," she said. He could sense rather than see her flush of of pride.

"You make good grades?"

She shrugged. "Eh. In subjects I like."

"What do you like?"

She thought for a moment. "Anything but math. I fucking hate math."

"I'm not huge on math either," Lugosi said. "I like English class." He nodded to himself. "English class is okay."

Ramona lifted one shoulder. "Eh."

"You never answered my question earlier. Do you like gardening and stuff? For fun?"

She picked up the other half of her roll and regarded it thoughtfully. "Yes," she finally said, "I like gardening."

"That's cool," Lugosi said, "I had a fern once. It died. I dunno what I did wrong."

Lifting her brow, she asked, "Did you water it?"

"Yeah," Lugosi said, "all the time. Like...five times a day? Maybe six?"

Ramona stared at him. "You over watered it, retard," she said.

"I did?" Lugosi asked dumbly.

She flashed a tight-lipped smile and nodded slowly. "Yes. You're not supposed to water them that much. You basically drowned it."

Oh. He had no idea a plant could drown. People and animals, yeah, but vegetation? Well...actually, yeah, that did make sense, but it's not like he held it underwater or anything. "I didn't mean to," he said.

"Yeah, well, that doesn't bring it back. It's still dead." The corner of her mouth twitched up into something resembling a smile, at the death of a plant or at his stupidity he didn't know.

"I know," he said and hung his head in contrition. "I feel like shit about it."

Before she could respond, if she was going to, the bell rang, signifying the end of lunch. He glanced up at her, and their eyes fleetingly met. In hers, he glimpsed a swirling mixture of confusion, trepidation, and...dude, was that mirth? Looked like it...like maybe she enjoyed hanging out with him. "Alright, it's been real," he said and got to his feet. She tracked him with her gaze, a skittish dog still expecting a blow even after being fed and petted. That made Lugosi feel even worse for her. "Maybe we can hang tomorrow?"

By way of reply, she got up, grabbed her tray, and walked away.

* * *

Lincoln sat in his armchair with his leg propped on his knee and his arms crossed over his shoulder, his eyes staring sightlessly at the TV set, where Kevin Thomas read the day's events on the CBS Evening News. Lucy was curled up on the couch with a paperback novel and Lugosi was in his room. At least Lincoln assumed that's where he was; he vanished after dinner and Lincoln hadn't seen him since.

The living room was a pool of shadows held at bay by the flicker of the television screen and by the warm, muted light of Lucy's lamp. The empty bookshelf stood against he wall flanking the entrance to the dining room, boxes of books and DVDs stacked next to it. Neither he nor Lucy had the gumption to do much unpacking today - they both worked and the idea of manual labor daunted them.

Well...that wasn't exactly the truth.

Lincoln didn't know how or why, but he had the strangest urge to _dig_. He couldn't say he'd ever felt the need to sink a blade into soft earth simply for the hell of it, but right now he thrummed with energy like a high tension wire, and the most beautiful thought he could muster was of him holding the splintered handle of a shovel in his hands and feeling the vibrations racing up his arms as the head slammed against a rock. A shiver went down his spine, and he shifted uncomfortably.

His mind flashed back to the dream he had the night before, the one where seething red light spilled through the cracks of the stones in the basement. Even though he knew there was nothing behind the cellar wall, he was compelled to go down there and see for himself...to run his fingers over rough rock, dig his nails into the earthen mortar, to pull…

A frown creased his lips and he opened then closed his fingers; they ached, literally ached, to rend soil and stone.

On TV, two teenage girls, hands cuffed behind their back, were lead into a courthouse by police in Stetsons and sunglasses; their gazes were downcast and their faces crisscrossed with cuts and abrasions, one brunette and roughly seventeen, the other blonde and twelve ish. " _...murdered their captors in self-defense. The body of one, however, shows signs of torture that police say cast their story in doubt."_

"This is really nice," Lucy said, rousing Lincoln from his reprieve. She stared at him over the arm of the couch, her mouth turned up in a tiny smile that somehow still managed to light up her face.

"It is," Lincoln said. Despite the bizarre and incessant urge to dig, it _was_ nice. They'd passed a thousand evenings like this, but here, in their dream home, it was different; more...satisfying. "It'll be even better when we're all unpacked."

The boxes in the living room weren't the only ones still hanging around. There were a few in their bedroom, two in the kitchen, and a few they shoved into the upstairs hall closet to get out of the way. Towels, extra linens, things of that nature.

"I know," she said. "I'm putting in for some time off." She glanced down at her book with a guilty expression. "I'm kind of savoring it. Once we're moved in it won't be so new and exciting anymore."

Lincoln chuckled. She wasn't wrong. "We can't stay packed up forever," he pointed out.

"We won't," Lucy said, "hopefully I'll be done by the end of the week. Maybe Monday depending on when they approve me. Which they probably will."

"Maybe we can grill out this weekend," Lincoln suggested.

Lucy hummed thoughtfully. "Maybe."

Later, after they made love in their own bed, Lincoln lay awake staring into the darkness, Lucy's head and hand resting on his naked chest; the gentle evenness of her breathing told him she was asleep.

The ball of hot need that had knotted in his chest all evening was gone, but every time he closed his eyes, he saw the cellar wall painted across the backs of his lids, that strange, eerie light throbbing like hellfire. Several times as he laid there, he almost broke and went down there...just to see. Of course he'd find nothing, it was just a dream, but feelings are irrational things, and sometimes strong, too.

Case in point: His love for Lucy.

Incest is not normal. Not only is it socially frowned upon, but the human body evolved with certain biological functions to specifically discourage it. Lincoln was a pragmatist, the meaning of life, he believed, was to create life; the human race was a self-feeding fire whose primary goal was to _spread._ Sex is such a major part of who we are as a species and as a civilization because each one of us is hardwired to want it, and often want it badly. Why?

To breed.

Children born of incest are at a significantly higher risk for various genetic diseases, and as the point of existence is to bear healthy offspring, the human body developed ways to dissuade it. By all rights, Lucy should never have fallen in love with him and he never should have fallen in love with _her,_ but he did, based not on chemicals in the brain, but on emotions in the heart. There was no real way to justify it, and long ago he stopped trying. He loved her and that was the end of it. What else could he say?

Right now, he wanted to go downstairs and see for himself if there was a red glow permeating his basement. That was the end of it? What else could he say?

At some point, he fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, his mind drifting on dark tides. Then, all at once, he snapped instantly awake, his mind clear and his eyes wide. In the night, Lucy rolled off of him, and curled up on her side, facing the closet door...which stood ajar even though he distinctly remembered closing it earlier.

He glanced at the clock on the nightstand. 3:00am.

Again?

Sighing, he drew himself to a sitting position and tilted his head back. The urge to go into the basement returned, stronger this time, pulsing in the center of his chest like a malignant tumor, and he blew a sharp puff of air through his teeth.

He knew it was stupid...knew it was an exercise in futility…

But he swung his legs out from under the covers and got up regardless, finding his way into the hall by the light of the harvest moon. He snapped the light on, filling the second floor with weak amber brilliance, then went down the stairs, stepping carefully like a boy sneaking out to see his girlfriend...or to inject tokes of weed with his buddies.

He crossed through the darkened living room and into the kitchen, flipping the switch as he went. Standing before the basement door, linolium cool under his feet, he sighed, feeling like the biggest jackass in the world. There was nothing down there. A water heater, an old furnace, some rocks. That was all.

Even so, he reached out, unlatched it, and flipped the switch on.

Nothing.

Darkness reigned supreme.

No, this is _nothing_ like every horror movie I've ever seen.

His resolved flagged, but he forced himself on anyway. You're gonna see once and for all that there's nothing behind the wall and then you're going to go back to bed. Okay?

Sure, Linc.

Taking a deep breath like a man preparing to jump into icy water, he went down the stairs, his passage swirling dust and his weight making the treads creak underfoot. At the bottom, thin, silvery moonlight fell through the slit window on the far wall and painted the cellar in a cold, corpsey half-glow. He hesitated and his heart began to inexplicably race. Why does it feel so much different down here? The atmosphere in the rest of the house was light and buoyant, but here it was heavy and cold, like the hand of a living cadaver pressing against your chest, squeezing the air from your lungs.

His fingers closed unconsciously around the bannister and his eyes shifted to the wall; it stood dark and cold, the spectral luminescence of the moon casting it in shadows like the face of a freshly risen ghoul. It pulled him forward as if by magnetism, and he stepped off of the tread, the sole of his foot sinking into cold dirt. His heart thundered and dread coiled in the pit of his stomach like sea sperant. He let go of the railing and crossed slowly to the wall. He stopped when he was close enough to touch it, and gazed into the cracks around the stones, seeing only darkness.

Nothing.

Go back to bed.

He started to turn, but froze when a damp draft of air washed over his face from seemingly nowhere, the sound of it rushing through the cracks like the chilling whisper of voices drifting from the black recesses of an open crypt. He frowned, reached out, and ran his fingers over one of the stones; it was cool and rough to the touch.

Something _had_ to be back there, otherwise where was the wind coming from?

The realtor _did_ say that the house was built in the twenties, smack dab in the middle of Prohibition. Gangsters, highwaymen, and crooks did a brisk business smuggling hooch in from Canada. Maybe the original owner (what was his damn name again?) imported illegal booze and kept it in a secret room behind the basement wall. It would make sense, especially being so close to the Canadian border.

He lingered for a moment...then broke away and went back upstairs. In the morning, he would not be able to tell if it really happened...or if he was only dreaming.

* * *

After dinner, Lugosi retreated to his room and tried to do his homework, but the pervasive feeling of being watched broke his concentration. He constantly looked over his shoulder, but nothing was ever there, save for the shadows that seemed to perpetually nest in the corners. He could almost believe that it was them watching him, waiting, plotting, biding their time until he was asleep…

He also had something else on his mind.

Ramona.

He'd been thinking of her all evening. She was a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, and though he couldn't explain why, he was compelled to learn her secrets. Earlier, at the end of the school day, he went to get on the bus but stopped when he spotted her in a crowd of kids making their way down the sidewalk, her head bowed and her books pressed to her chest. During lunch, he felt a pull toward her, and now it was stronger, tugging incessantly at him an urgent grasp. He glanced indecisively between her and the bus - it'd be a long walk home, but the urge to follow her was strong indeed.

Making up his mind, he went after her, weaving through kids until he caught up to her at the corner. She looked up at him and rolled her eyes. _Please go away,_ she begged, only her lips did not move. Her voice, however, sounded as clearly as though she had spoke. His friendly smile faltered and for a beat he was completely taken aback, then recovered when she threw back her head and groaned. "Why do you keep bothering me?" she asked, a strained edge in her voice.

"I'm not," he lied, "I live down this way too. Just trying to get home." That was not untrue; he _did,_ technically, live in the direction she was walking. Way, way, _way_ in that direction.

"You're full of shit," she said, "you're either into me or you're playing some kind of sick game."

They were crossing the street now, a line of cars idling at the light. "Game?" he asked, genuinely confused. "What kind of game could I be playing?"

 _One that involves me getting hurt._

"I don't wanna hurt you," he said casually because, hey, he didn't. She whipped her head up and narrowed her eyes to suspicious slits. "What?"

She started to reply, then turned away and started walking faster. He sped up to match her pace and wondered if she actually said that last part, or if he was imagining shit. Given the events of the past couple days, he couldn't entirely discount the possibility. "Why are you doing this?" she demanded sharply.

"I told you, I wanna be friends."

"You don't even _know_ me."

Lugosi shrugged. "That's why I'm trying to find out more about you. You can't make friends with someone if you don't interact with them."

Ramona sighed.

"Look, I'm serious, okay?" he said, "I'm not asking you to put all your trust in me or anything, just...shoot the breeze."

Slumping her shoulders in defeat, she said, "Fine."

"Great," Lugosi grinned.

They walked together for five blocks and made small talk along the way. The atmosphere surrounding her, dark and oppressive when he first approached her, seemed to lighten the farther they went. Thoughts flashed through his mind and though it might sound crazy, he didn't think they were his - they came from her, none fully formed, but rather vague sensations. He pieced them together and arrived at the conclusion that he was wearing her down...and it annoyed her.

Lol, what's that Japanese term for a girl who's a bitch but likes you? Parker used it all the time. _Man, that chick's a real…?_ Lugosi couldn't remember. Laundry?

At a side street, she stopped. "Alright, there," she said, "we interacted."

Lugosi nodded. "Yeah, we did."

"And now I'm going home."

"Okay."

She lifted her brow, then turned away. "Bye," he said.

For a moment she didn't speak, then: "Bye."

Presently, he pondered the way he _felt_ her _aura_ and picked up on her thoughts. Maybe he was overthinking, or maybe he was going crazy - he didn't know, and right now he was more confused than he had ever been in his life. He did know one thing for sure: He was drawn to Ramona Santiago and perhaps...perhaps she was right and he _was_ into her.


	6. Haunted Hearts

Lucy had been working at her current job for nearly ten years, and in that time she'd taken only two days off - once Lugosi had the flu at nine, and again when she herself had it two years ago. She was not overly dedicated to her work, but as the years progressed and her personal days accumulated, she decided that she wanted to keep them on hand in case she really needed them at some point.

Now was that point.

She put in for a week and was quickly approved, which gave her ample time to get the house organized. Thursday morning, after she kissed Lincoln and Lugosi goodbye, she went into the kitchen, poured herself a cup of coffee, and sat at the table, where she sipped it with the languor of a woman whose time was her own, and whose boss was herself.

As she enjoyed the peace and quiet, she planned her day to the minute. First, she would finish unpacking the boxes in hers and Lincoln's room, then she'd put away the last of the dishes in here, then, perhaps after lunch, she'd unpack all the books and DVDs - the bookshelf, standing against the wall flaking the dining room archway, was barren, and it bothered her every time she looked at it. A room without books, Cicero said, is like a body without a soul, and as it stood right now, her living room was a corpse.

Maybe she'd do that first.

Finishing her coffee, she got up, rinsed it in the sink, and sat it in the drying rack. Through the window, the day was gray and damp, the thin autumn rain making ripples in the surface of the lake. She liked rainy days - they were perfect for snuggling up with a book or taking a nap. She had a special armchair for the former, and there was something endlessly comforting in sitting by the window with a novel and occasionally glancing up at the rain sluiced glass.

Cozy. Days like this were cozy. Outside, it was cold and wet, but inside it was dry and warm.

She splayed her fingers on the sink and drew a deep, contented sigh. Life was as good now as she supposed it would ever be. She and Lincoln finally had a home to call their own and their little family was happy and at peace. What more could one really ask for? Not much. She and Lincoln didn't bring home a lot of money, but they always had what they needed and often times what they wanted as son was healthy and well-adjusted. Their car, while on the older side, ran wel. She and Lincoln both had job security.

Things were rocky in the beginning, like a plane shaking with turbulence on take off, but they were finally smoothed out. The dark spot was their family, who to this day had very little to do with them. Lana, Lola, Luan, Lynn, and Lori still lived close by, but she and Lincoln rarely saw or spoke to them. When they did, the air was unfailingly thick with tension and their interactions were stiff, awkward, the way they would be with a once close friend after a major falling out and a half-hearted reconciliation. She understood the taboo aspect of hers and Lincoln's relationship...in fact, at one point it even appealed to her...but even so, it cut her deeply that their surviving family did not accept it. She loved Lincoln with all her heart and he made her giddy with happiness every single day. Was it objectively disgusting to feel that way for your brother? To make love to him? To bear his child? Maybe, but Cupid's arrow strikes where it strikes. One cannot help who they fall in love with anymore than they can help what color their eyes are.

It had been nearly thirty years since she first looked at Lincoln as something more than family, and even now, she wished, deep in her heart of hearts, that their sisters would love them be happy for them. She didn't think they ever would, but she held out hope because without hope, you have nothing. Her hope sustained her through many hard times in her life, and while it was sometimes a faint flicker - a candle snuffing in the wind - it never went out completely: Her hope for a better career, her hope for a better home. Those things came to pass, and maybe her hope that her sisters would accept her and Lincoln would too.

Drawing a deep breath, she went into the living room and knelt next to the box of books and movies. She opened the flaps, grabbed a stack of DVDs, and carried them over to the shelf, where she arranged them according to genre: Horror, drama, comedy, and children's. They didn't have very many of the latter anymore, but she held onto Lugosi's childhood favorites out of nostalgia. She went back to the box, picked up another, and turned to take it to the bookshelf, but stopped when a strange tingling sensation reminiscent of pins and needles filled her skull. She stiffened and the DVD's fell from her hands; hissing through clenched teeth, pressed her fingertips to her temples and grimaced in pain as her ears began to ring. An image flashed across her mind - pulsing red light - and something raked across her brain like the tentative ghosting of fingertips...exploring...testing...looking for a way in.

Just as suddenly as it started, it was over, the fingers yanking away as if from something unexpectedly hot. Dizziness came over her and her knees went weak; she started to pitch forward, but shot out her hands and caught herself on the bookcase, leaning heavily on it for support. Her breathing came in hot gasps and a trembling shudder ran through her body.

Nearly thirty years ago, she felt the exact same thing when a demon tried to read her mind - right down to the abiding sense of being violated that now flowed through her like sludge. Her psychic abilities - never especially strong to begin with - faded over time, but she knew the feeling of being mentally cased well enough that there was no doubt in her mind what just happened.

Something tried to get in.

A chill slid down her spine and she looked around as if she would be able to see it - a twisted nightmare creature wrapped in darkness - but she was alone.

Still shaky, she pushed away from the bookshelf and made her way into the kitchen, where she poured herself another cup of coffee with trembling hands, spilling some on the counter. She sat at the table and took a drink, the hot liquid doing little to warm the ice settled in her bones.

Whatever it was, it had to be close. Demonic entities cannot enter mind from afar - there must be a mingling of auras for it to work, your mental energy blending with theirs. The hairs on her arms stood up and the back of her neck tingled. She threw a nervous glance over her shoulder - the kitchen stood empty save for the shade of dirty gray light falling through the window centered in the back door. Maybe she was paranoid now, but she didn't feel like she was alone - she could sense a dark presence nearby, a vague, queasy stirring at the base of her spine. Where was it, though?

In the house?

Her heart skipped a beat and her fingers tightened around the coffee cup, numb to the ceramic burning her skin.

She was suddenly afraid.

Thirty years ago, she and Lincoln faced down two supernatural creatures which, she had come to believe, is two more than most people deal with. Expert monster hunters like _Dracula's_ Abraham Van Helsing do not exist because so few people encounter the otherworldly. Maybe a one time they did, but certainly not anymore. She and Lincoln were then the closest thing to experts on the subject as two people could possibly be. Even so, she was not unfailingly brave in the face of the paranormal. Her mind told her to get up and check the house from top to bottom, but her body was paralyzed in fear. Her hand went to the cross around her neck and she squeezed it tight like a child clutching a teddy bear against the specter of monsters in the closet.

She couldn't just sit here and delude herself into believing that she was mistaken, though. They say that you never forget how to ride a bike...well, you never forget what it feels like to have your brain prodded by a _thing_ seeking ingress. There's no sensation like it in the world, at least not one that she ever experienced. She _needed_ to get up and look around, but God, she didn't want to.

Finishing her coffee, she forced herself to her feet and looked at the door to the back stairway. Her heart twinged and she swallowed hard. She'd start in the living room.

Holding the cross protectively in her hand, she searched the living room and the parlor, the latter devoid of furniture. She snapped on every light as she went, taking heart even though they afforded no real protection. She checked in every nook and cranny, but found nothing, so went upstairs, her dread rising with every step she took. At the top, she stared down the hall, her resolve wavering. She forged ahead anyway, starting in hers and Lincoln's room. Her heart raced as she opened the closet and knelt beside the bed to peer underneath.

She found nothing. No ghosts, no ghouls, no vampires, nothing but empty house.

After Lugosi's room, she went into the attic with a flashlight. Nothing there either.

Back in the kitchen, she dropped into a chair and took a deep breath. That was everywhere.

Her eyes went to the basement door and her stomach dropped.

When the realtor first showed them the house, she noticed a certain atmosphere in the cellar - dank, stale, heavy like a wet woolen blanket. She didn't particularly like it, but she ascribed it to the area being dusty, closed up, and underground. She hadn't been back down there since they moved in, and now that she thought about it, she realized that she may have been intentionally avoiding it.

Was something down there?

Slowly, cautiously, like a woman staring down a dangerous animal in a corner, Lucy got to her feet, her grip on the cross tightening. The arms bit painfully into the padding of her palm and the scraping of the chair legs against the linoleum put her uncomfortably in mind of a crypt door being opened from the inside. She hesitated a moment, then crossed to the door, her steps small and reluctant. She reached out, unlatched it, and swung it open, a stale draft pushing the coppery scent of earth into her nostrils. She listened, heard nothing, and, taking a deep breath, she started down, the treads groaning underfoot. Gray half-light filled the space like ash, and at the bottom of the stairs, she stopped and cast an anxious look around. Shadows nested in the corners and cobwebs blew in the damp draft.

First, she checked behind the stairs, then in the space between the wall and the hot water heater, then crossed to the other side and peeked into the furnace, its inside cold, dead, and caked with the soot of fires past. She found no signs of anything, natural or otherwise. Even so, the back of her neck burned with the sensation of being watched. She turned in a semi-circle , but if something was there, she could not see it….she could feel it, though, a low, thrumming vibration deep in her soul.

Before she knew she was speaking, she said, "I know you're here. What do you want?"

Nothing responded, nothing moved.

It was here, though, she could sense it.

In the kitchen, she shut the door behind her and leaned heavily against it.

Haunted. Her new home was haunted. She let out a humorless laugh and threaded her fingers through her hair. Isn't that just like life? Take something beautiful and happy and fuck it over. Inexplicable tears filled her eyes and she almost broke down. She was so excited for this and now…

She took a deep breath and got control of herself. Ghosts were real - she believed that with every fiber of her being; the number of reports throughout human history were far too many to ignore. What exactly they were, however, eluded her. Some believe that ghosts are conscious spirits while others posit that they are simply echoes rippling through the fabric of reality: When you witness a ghost walking down a hallway, you are seeing something that happened at some point in the past. Imagine pressing your hand into a foam mattress and leaving an imprint - there's your ghost. Whatever they may be, they cannot search your mind the way _this_ did. Demons can and perhaps other things, but not simple ghosts.

Which meant that whatever was here, it was potentially dangerous.

The fridge kicked on with a low hum, and she jumped, a sharp exclamation bursting from her throat. She pushed away from the door and went to the counter, where she'd left her phone. She picked it up, swiped her thumb across the screen, and dialed a number. There might be a demon in her home, or soaked into the very ground upon which it was built, but it would not be there for long.

* * *

Lincoln Loud passed Thursday afternoon in a state of restlessness, his fingers drumming on the surface of his desk and his mind far away. He was normally open and affable with his coworkers, but today he was sullen and quiet, replying to their jests, greetings, and small talk with surly monosyllables. Bill from accounting insisted on showing him pictures of his niece and nephew at the water cooler, and Lincoln tolerated it with strained patience, outwardly smiling but inwardly wondering if he could stab Bill in the eye with a pencil and pass it off as an accident. At noon, he went into the dayroom to fetch his lunch from the refrigerator - a tuna sandwich and bag of chips in a brown paper bag - and found it squished by pasta and sauce in a Tupperware container. _Oh, there's no room, here, let me set it on top of someone else's food._

Flashing, he snatched the container out of the fridge and threw it into the trash, taking savage satisfaction when the lid came off and the contents spilled out. Fuck you, prick, eat your spaghetti from the garbage. He snatched his lunch, slammed the door, and went back to his desk. As he ate, he turned the previous night's events over and over in his head, worry gnawing at his chest like the teeth of a rodent chewing its way through soft, pink insulation.

It started as a dream. He was shuffling warily through a tilted hallway, his heart slamming. At the end was a door. He went through it and emerged in the basement of the Lutz Drive house. The earthen floor was cold underfoot, the air stale, and soft, throbbing red light filtering out around the edges of the stones comprising the wall. His fear drained away and in its place came the stillest, deepest peace he had ever known. A thousand whispering voices swirled around him like a stir of echoes, and while he couldn't understand them, they were soothing nevertheless.

Someone, or something, handed him a pick ax, and his feet carried him to the wall, the light bathing him in warm glow.

That's when he woke up.

Standing before the stone wall in the darkened basement, a pick ax he'd never seen before clutched in his hands. For a moment, the line between sleep and consciousness blurred, and he didn't know whether he was still dreaming or not. Then, with a start, he realized that he was indeed awake, and he stumbled back, the ax dropping from his hands and landing in the dirt with a soft _pfft._ The light was gone, if it had ever been there to begin with, but he could still feel it on his face like a sunburn. The voices were also absent, the cellar silent save for the ragged pant of his own breathing. His peace and tranquility departed, replaced by superstitious panic, and he fled up the stairs, falling halfway up and banging his shin on one of the treads.

In the kitchen, he made a pot of coffee and waited at the table, his body shaking and his spirit in turmoil. He sleepwalked every once in a blue moon, but something about this time didn't feel right. In fact, he wasn't even entirely sure where the line of demarcation between sleep and wakefulness lie. He _thought_ he woke just before running, but as he ran it through his mind, he didn't know if he did or not.

Maybe he was awake sooner.

And the pick ax...he and Lucy didn't even _own_ a pick ax. Or a shovel. Or any tools. They just moved from an apartment, for Christ's sake, why would they need any of that stuff? Their landlord did all of the shovelling and pick axing for them. He _could_ have grabbed it from a shadowy corner of the basement, where it was left three or even four owners ago, but he knew for a fact that there was no pick ax down there. Yet he came awake holding one.

Or did he?

He honestly didn't know: He was so confused he didn't know _anything..._ except that the urge to go back down there, pick up the ax, and start digging at the wall...to reveal the source of that wonderful, comforting light, was so strong he jittered.

After his third cup of coffee, he was fortified enough to make it upstairs, his chest filled with _yearning._ There was nothing in the wall...the light was entirely in his head...but the impulse only grew as he lay in bed. He tossed, turned, and vainly sought sleep, finding questions, fears, and suspicions instead.

Before dawn, he fell into a fitful sleep from which he woke an hour later edgy and tired. The urge to dig came back like a hammer blast, and as he stood in the kitchen making his lunch, he almost gave in...almost threw off his jacket, undid his tie, and went down into the cellar. The ax would be where he left it...the stones would be loose enough that it shouldn't take much work…

Instead, he went to work, and ever since, the dark compulsion had been steadily intensifying, his every cell crying out for him to dig. He had never been addicted to drink or drug, but he imagined that this was how a crackhead felt as he jonesed for a hit, and though he told himself that he would not give in...that he had no reason to tear out the wall in the basement...he knew that as soon as he got home, he was going to whether he wanted or not.

After lunch, he and the rest of the department attended a meeting in the conference room, and while the CFO droned over flow charts and Powerpoints, Lincoln daydreamed, envisioning the heady moment the tip of the ax struck the first stone. He could _feel_ the vibrations of the impact running up his arms, could _hear_ the musical _clink_ of that initial strike. He didn't care what was behind the wall, if anything; the intoxicating act of digging became the only thing that mattered.

By the end of the day, he trembled with need, his right eye twitching and lending him the appearance of a tweaker going into withdrawals. He rushed out to the car, ignoring banal fare-thee-wells and _see ya tomorrow, Linc_ s. In the lobby, Jack the security guard sat behind the front desk, his hands in his lap and a dumb expression on his face. Lincoln and Jack went to school together and got along well, but when Jack told him to have a good day, Lincoln almost snapped at him. _Why can't anyone leave me alone?_

Outside, the day was overcast and cold, a chilly wind sweeping across the parking lot. He didn't notice it as he crossed to the car, didn't notice the pick up slamming on its brakes and honking as he walked in front of it, noticed nothing but the throbbing _need_ in the pit of his stomach. He unlocked the driver side door and slipped in behind the wheel, starting the engine. Neglecting his seatbelt, he backed up, spun the wheel, and set a course for home, his fingers gripping the wheel so tight that his knuckles turned a bloodless shade of white. He resembled a man in a trance, and pulled into his driveway with no memory of getting there.

He parked by the front door, got out, and went inside - he did not notice the change in atmosphere when he crossed the threshold, but his step faltered nevertheless. _Not now,_ a toneless voice spoke from the center of his head. _Wait._

Lucy.

She couldn't know.

He wasn't sure where this information came from or why, but he did not question it. The ball of desire in his stomach unclenched, and the intensity of his longing lessened. _Later. Later dig. Dig later. Dig tonight._

"Tonight," he mumbled dazedly to himself. "Tonight."

* * *

He was cracking up - Friedrich Nietzsche warned that he who fought monsters must take care that he himself did not become a monster, and from the time he was a child, Lugosi Loud studied to fight monsters. Now, at sixteen, he was rapidly morphing into one, his mind crumbling like an archaic piece of masonry and choking dust fogging his brain. Since Tuesday night, voices whispered on an endless loop from the center of his skull, sometimes so low as to be inaudible, and sometimes so loud he couldn't hear over them. They insulted him, commented on everything he did (often critically), and chanted for him to _kill, kill, kill._

Losing control of his mind - being a hostage of mental illness - was the one thing that truly terrified him, and now, it was coming to pass, and every waking moment, aching fear throbbed in his chest. He did his best to hide it from his parents, but it was beginning to show. In the bathroom mirror that Thursday morning, his face was pale and his his features haggard, his dark eyes pooled with fevered sickness. _Crazy...you're going crazy...you're going to hurt someone...father killer, father killer, father killer._ Water spilled down his cheeks and he fisted his hands to his temples. "Shut up! Just...shut...up…"

Monday night, he dreamed of murdering his parents...standing amidst a field of carnage with an ax in his hands, panting, blood soaked into the living room floor and splattered across the walls, body parts strewn around like the after effects of a grizzly temper tantrum. He watched himself from outside - a spectator - and when the other Lugosi lifted his head, he sat bolt upright in bed with a scream locked in his throat. The face he saw was recognizably his own, but harder, colder, his thin lips pulled back from his teeth in a mad smile and his eyes burning with sadistic glee.

After that, he was too afraid to sleep, and passed the rest of the long, satanic night in a fetal position, trembling and fighting back tears. _Killer...psycho...monster…_

"No," he plaintively moaned.

 _He's the next John Wayne Gacy._

Another voice laughed cruelly. _He'll kill his parents...then children._

"I won't," he vowed.

 _He'll kill them then molest their bodies._

All of the voices - a thousand, a million, _infinity -_ shrieked with hateful laughter, and that's when he broke down and cried.

He wouldn't hurt his parents...or anyone else...no matter _what_ they said. He _hated_ people who hurt others. Killers, bullies, abusers, rapists, pedophiles, fascists, communists...he despised them and so far he'd dedicated most of his life to standing against them. He didn't want to be a criminal psychologist to hang out with serial killers and be their friend, he wanted to to be a criminal psychologist to stop them.

When he was a child, his mother introduced him to the movies she liked. _Halloween; The Texas Chainsaw Massacre; A Nightmare on Elm Street; Friday the 13th; Natural Born Killers; Psycho;_ and a thousand other cult classic horror films where someone in a mask butchers innocent people. She did it because, he thought, she wanted to share something she was passionate about with her child, just like any parent would. He couldn't fault her for that, and in a way he _did_ enjoy those movies...and the bonding he and Mom did over them...but he didn't like the villains. He didn't look at them as anti-heroes or role models...he didn't relish their kills the way some fans did; the screams and abject, animal terror of their victims stayed with him long after the credits, and lying in bed at night, he asked himself _why._

He couldn't remember when he discovered that killers like the ones in those movies really exist, but he _did_ recall being disturbed, scared...and angry. He decided that those men - the Dahmers and Gacys of the world - were every bit the monster as their onscreen counterparts, and needed to be stopped. He was ten when he realized that he wanted to actively fight them. At first he wanted to be a cop...the one to physically put them in handcuffs and take them off the street...then he wanted to be a detective, the one to gather all the evidence and track them down...then, as his interest in aberrant psychology blossomed, he wanted to work at knowing their minds so that he could anticipate their next move and head it off.

Nothing could make him hurt someone else...nothing, not even all the voices in the universe. That didn't staunch the fear gushing from his heart, and while he knew it sounded crazy, he couldn't help the feeling that something was drawing it out of him, making him afraid so that it could feast on it. Something like…

The house.

Tuesday, at school, the voices were faint - he couldn't make out words or even tone, they were a low, monotonous babble and he thought they were going away. Then, on the bus, the volume steadily increased the closer her got to home. The same thing today - they screamed and yelled and laughed as loud as they could, but the farther away he got, the quieter they became until he could barely hear them again. The house...the fucking house...it was _trying_ to drive him crazy. He didn't know how, or why, but as he sat in history class, head down and fingers threaded through his hair in a posture of misery, he decided that it was. What could he do about it? Burn it to the ground?

A shiver went through him. That's exactly what a crazy person would do - torch a house because _it's driving me crazy and feeding on my fear like a vampire._

During lunch, he sat next to Paul in the crowded cafeteria and stared down at his tray. Paul went on and on and on about Candy - how beautiful she was, how _vivacious_ and _perfect,_ how she'd never want a geek like him, how he sucked, how he was going to die a virgin. Normally Lugosi would try and buck him up (isn't that what friends do?) but today, he wanted to shake him. _Shut up! Shut up! I don't fucking care!_

When he looked up, he caught a girl with red hair staring at him from across the room, a sly little smile on her lips. A voice broke from the pack, its words barely loud enough to discern. _She knows...kill her._

He forced his gaze back to the tray and squeezed his eyes closed.

"...I wanna kiss her and squeeze her butt cheeks so bad," Paul sighed.

Anger flared in Lugosi's chest and he turned to him, his teeth clenched. Paul shrank instinctively away, his eyes widening in alarm. "Then fucking do it and leave me alone."

The fear and hurt he saw in his friend's eyes disturbed him, and without another word, he got to his feet and stormed off, his hands balling into fists. Rage boiled in his stomach - rage at the house, rage at himself, rage at the voices in his head, rage at his own broken mind - and so too did fear. He was so fucking scared he could barely think, scared of hurting someone, scared of winding up in a padded room, scared of watching his dreams shatter.

And that's just what it wanted.

He knew that innately, the way a baby knows its mother, and he had to fight it, couldn't be afraid, couldn't give in.

At the end of the day, he started toward the bus, but decided that he didn't want to go home...at least not now. Instead, he broke from the crowd of kids streaming out of the building and started walking, letting his feet take him where they wanted. He wound up on the athletic field flanking the building. A row of bleachers overlooked a baseball diamond, and smattering of kids sat here and there in small groups. One lone figure sat at the very top, and even though he couldn't see them clearly from where he stood, he knew instinctively that it was Ramona Santiago.

Climbing onto the bleachers, he went over and sat next to her. She stared into space, her arms wrapped protectively around her chest. The energy surrounding her was dark and thick, and from the stormy look in her eyes, he could only infer that something was wrong.

When he sat, she glanced at him then away, registering his presence but taking no special note of it, as though them meeting like this and sitting together was a well-established tradition stretching back semesters. "You're a fucking stalker," she said, her voice hollow and devoid of emotion.

"No," he admitted, his tone as flat and listless as hers, "I just don't wanna go home."

She darted her eyes to him then away. "You too?"

That knocked him off balance. You too? "You don't wanna go home either?"

She didn't respond; she simply gazed into space; dark vibes emanated from her in waves, and Lugosi's stomach clutched. "Why don't you wanna go home?" he pressed.

"No reason," she said.

The lie was clear in her voice.

"There's gotta be a reason."

"No."

He sighed. "How about this: I'll tell you why _I_ don't wanna go home then you tell me why _you_ don't wanna go home."

She didn't reply and Lugosi took a deep breath. "I, uh, I think my house is haunted." He uttered a harsh, humorless laugh, and she turned to him, her brow knitting incredulously. "I know, it's nuts, but...I'm be serious. I think my house...has something wrong with it." Right now, he didn't know if it was the house or his head, but he wasn't going to tell her he suspected that he was going crazy. "What's your reason?"

Sighing, Ramona flicked her eyes to her lap. "I don't wanna talk about it," she said lowly. She turned her head away and a wave of mental energy washed over him. Like before, thoughts that did not originate in his own mind came, stronger now, but still only colors instead of words. Something was really bothering her and she was so close to tears he could almost smell them, like rain in the air before a storm.

Before he knew what he was doing, he surprised himself by slipping a comforting arm around her shoulder. Her body went rigid and red filled his mind: The color of alarm. His thoughts must have transmitted to her the way hers had to his, because she relaxed and even leaned into him as if for comfort. For a moment, the world was still, like a VHS on pause...then she started to cry, her body hitching and choked sobs falling from her trembling lips. A sharp pang of sympathy rippled through his stomach and he held her closer, his fingertips unconsciously brushing up and down her bare arm. He didn't know what was wrong, but he suddenly wanted to make it better.

Shortly, her tears tapered off to sniffle and her trembling petered out. He grasped for something to say, but came up with nothing, so he just started talking. "I think you bully people because you're afraid that if you let them get too close, they'll hurt you." She tensed but didn't speak. "People hurt you in the past and you don't want it to happen again, so you developed a defense mechanism to make sure it wouldn't: You strike first, before they have the chance to do it to you." He trailed off and collected his thoughts. "I don't blame you. People can be assholes. I don't want to hurt you, though. I legit wanna be your friend. If that means talking about your problems, great, if it means just saying hi in the hall, alright. I feel like...you have some things going on. Right now. Some stuff in the past. I dunno. I think you need someone to talk to and to be there for you. If you want to talk, I'll listen."

Ramona was silent for a long time, considering his words. "I appreciate that," she said haltingly and swallowed. "I really don't wanna talk about it, though."

Lugosi nodded. "Y-You're okay, though, right? Like…"

"No, it's nothing like that." She hesitated, and Lugosi could feel her teetering on the edge of opening up. "It's my mom," she said, "she's really sick and….and I'm afraid I'm going to lose her." Her voice broke on the last word and she started crying again. Lugosi's heart broke and he pulled her closer, not knowing what to say so just comforting her instead.

When the storm passed again, she sniffed and swiped the back of her hand across her nose. "She has cancer," she said haltingly, "and...it's pretty bad." She paused and thought. "And...you're kind of right. I guess maybe I _do_ worry people will tease me...like they used to. I just got really sick of being called snaggle tooth and feeling like shit."

She hazarded a glance up, and their gazes locked. Staring into her liquid brown eyes, shimmering in the light of the autumn sun, something stirred deep inside Lugosi's soul, and his hand went to the side of her face almost of its own accord, his thumb ghosting over her freckled cheek and brushing a stray tear away. Her pupils dilated ever so slightly and her lips parted; she was feeling the same fluttery sensation that he was, the same forward pull.

Tilting his head to one side, he leaned into her, and she met his lips with hers half way, their tongues caressing gingerly at first, uncertain, then with more passion when each found the other agreeable. She kissed clumsily, like a coy fawn slipping on ice, and, sensing her inexperience, Lugosi kissed back just as gently, stroking her tongue lightly with his, leading her tenderly along, teaching her. He slid his fingers into her soft, warm hair and rubbed the pad of his thumb over the delicate ridge of her cheekbone as the kiss deepened, their tongues tasting and tentatively exploring the inside of one another's mouth. Her sweet breath intoxicated his senses and burned away all of the fear and disquiet that had been steadily building in him over the past three days. The moist, pillowy scrape of her lips against his sent tingles racing out from the center of his stomach and turned his knees to jelly. A formless tidal wave of emotion crested over him, rolling from her heart and mind in an excited gush: Panic, fear, arousal, hope, and girlish excitement, She laid her palm flat on her chest and curled her fingers into him like a falling girl clutching desperately for safety, and Lugosi took her other cheek in his hand, holding her face now and drinking her in the way a man might drink in fine wine.

When they parted, her eyes were hazy and faraway, her face flushing pink and her lips sparkling; her chest rose and fell with rapidly exhalations. A slow, lazy smile spread across her glowing face and a light, airy giggle burst from her throat. In that moment, she was radiant, and Lugosi's heart twinged with something he could not name. Gazing into her watery brown eyes, he was captivated. He had seen girls more attractive than Ramona, but none of them were as beautiful as she was right now.

She opened her mouth to speak, but giggled again and darted her eyes away. Her hand still lay on his chest, his heart thumping sickly against her palm. "That was…" she started and trailed off. "I wasn't expecting that. At all."

"Neither was I," Lugosi admitted. "I...I honestly wasn't trying to...you know…do this. I just…" he trailed off himself.

She watched him for a moment with those big, twinkling eyes, then took her hand from his chest and rested it on his knee. "I...I'm glad you did, though. I think." Her brow pinched indecisively and she sighed. "I'm...kinda...worried that...you'll hurt me like everyone else." The final six words came out in a rush of confession.

"I know," Lugosi said, "I kind of...get that feeling." He stopped and collected his thoughts. "I can't say where...this...is gonna go, but I would never hurt you. In any way." He brushed his thumbs over her cheeks and looked deep into her eyes as he vowed, "I promise."

* * *

Lucy sat stiffly in the armchair flanking the couch, her arms crossed over her chest and her legs folded underneath. Lincoln sat on the couch, hands on his knees, staring at the TV with the same preoccupied expression he'd been wearing since he came home from work; all that evening, he was quiet, and when she spoke to him, he replied in grunts and monosyllables. When she told him about what happened earlier, he nodded and agreed that calling the priest was the right thing to do, but his placating tone suggested that he was simply humoring her. _This is serious,_ she said. His response was an understated _I know._

He should be more worried, why wasn't he more worried? Why did he keep staring off into space? Every time she asked him, he said it had to do with work but didn't elaborate. Something told her that was a lie, but she didn't know for sure.

Maybe she was being paranoid. Ever since the incident in the living room, she'd been on edge, jumping at every noise and looking hard into every shadow. Lincoln often came home with things on his mind, nothing new there. He usually opened up to her, though; he never gave her one word responses and vague excuses. If his boss dressed him down, he told her; if he was having problems with a coworker, he told her; if he was afraid of being demoted for messing up on paperwork or mishandling an irate caller, he told her.

This wasn't like him, and it bothered her.

She yawned. She was starting to get sleepy; her eyelids grew suddenly heavy and her brain felt like it was sinking into warm mud.

Lugosi was acting strangely too. At dinner, he kept his head down and barely spoke. When he did, his voice was a little too loud, like he was talking over a din. Thinking back, it occurred to her that he never once made eye contact during the whole meal. He was normally clear and direct, like his father, and when he talked to you, he locked his gaze with yours. He didn't do that tonight. His posture was different too, tense and guarded; instead of sitting upright, he hunched over. He seemed...nervous. When she asked if he was okay, he said something about a big, upcoming test; Lucy knew her son well enough that she could see through the lie instantly. Lugosi never agonized over a test; he was a good student and all of his grades were passing, even if some _were_ a little on the lower side (like English). She didn't press the matter but maybe she should have.

Her head lolled forward and she snapped it back with a start, realizing that she was almost asleep. She shifted and looked at the clock on the wall: It was ten to eight. Why was she so drowsy?

On the television, a talking head droned about the president's domestic policy while an endless ticker of bad news crawled across the bottom of the screen. She blinked her eyes in an attempt to wake herself up and considered going for a cup of coffee, but the thought of getting up made her even more tired than she already was. She yawned again and allowed her lids to flutter shut. Dozing wouldn't hurt, she guessed.

She rested her head against her shoulder, and in moments she dropped into a deep, drugged slumber.

 _Now,_ a voice said from the middle of Lincoln's skull. _She's asleep._

Obeying the command as readily as a marionette on the end of a string, Lincoln got to his feet and shuffled into the kitchen, his eyes glazing over. At the basement door, he unlatched it and went down into the darkness. He didn't bother to turn the light on; he didn't need it.

The pickax was where he left it. He bent, picked it up, and held it in his hands. Faint red light appeared between the stones, and for a moment he basked in its brilliance. _Hurry,_ a voice said, this one sounding oddly like his mother. _Let us out._

 _Please, let us out,_ Lynn begged, _we're so hungry._

He saw them in his mind - Mom, his sisters, all with open arms and loving smiles. _We're sorry, we love you and Lucy and we're happy for you. Come home._ He didn't know how, but they were on the other side of this wall, and if he dug deep enough, they would accept his and Lucy's love...and their son.

Tightening his fingers around the spintery handle, he hefted the ax over his shoulder and paused; the light throbbed faster, more insistently. _Let us out,_ they plead, a chorus of need, _let us out, let us out._

He brought the ax down.

 _Clink!_

It would take a while...but he would let them out. He would let them _all_ out.


	7. Nothing To Do With God

One of the main symptoms of schizophrenia is not being able to distinguish between dreams and reality: For a schizophrenic, the line separating the two is not as defined as it is for other people. Lugosi knew this from his research, but never thought he'd experience it for himself.

Then it happened.

He was lying in bed long after midnight Friday morning, his wide eyes staring into the darkness. The voices were gone and he listened expectantly to the night, his breath bated and his heart aching in dread. He _knew_ something was going to happen, and for hours he waited, the waxing and waning moonlight the only thing marking the passage of time.

Finally, a low, ghostly moan drifted down the hall, freezing his blood. He gripped the blanket and tried to pull it over his head like a child hiding from the bogeyman, but instead, he slipped out from under it and stood, his heart blasting and his brain screaming frantically for him to get back in bed where it was safe. He wanted to listen, but he was not in control.

His greatest fear had been realized: He was a literal prisoner in his own body, watching helplessly as _something_ guided him to the door and then into hall, where pitch black held endless court. He shuffled to a stop and stayed there for what seemed like an eternity, shadows dancing around him like evil incarnate. Then a shuffling scrape sounded from the direction of the back stairs, followed by a thump.

A lump of ice formed in his chest.

Something was coming.

 _Scrape. Thump. Scrape. Thump._ A dead, broken foot dragging as _IT_ slowly made its way up the steps, indisuadable as death. He started to shake and tried to break free from the grasp of whatever held him, but it tightened its grip around him, forcing him to remain. Another moan filled the world, closer, and every nerve in his body crackled.

 _Thump. Scrape. Thump. Scrape._

It was almost on top of him now, and as he watched, it emerged from the darkness, a stooped, white -faced apparition with sharp, contorted features, wide, yellow eyes, and lank red hair framing its sunken cheeks. A blue dress clung to its gaunt form, and it held its skeletal hands up in front of it, long, gnarled fingers twitching with impossible and unholy life. Lugosi's soul withered and a sharp pang of terror tore through his center like the spinning blade of a buzz saw.

Zelda. From _Pet Sematary_.

" _I've come for you, Lugosi,"_ it said, its voice an ominous echo.

Electric fright shot through his body and tears welled in his eyes. He strained against the invisible shackles binding him, but they were too strong.

Zelda took a jerky step forward, and Lugosi's heart exploded. A wicked smile crept across her thin lips and her eyes burned with hellish light. " _Now you'll cum for me."_

She dropped stiffly to her knees and reached for his crotch. A scream of horror lodged in his throat and escaped his lips as a hiss of air. She pulled down his zipper and reached in, her bony fingers cold as clay on his flesh. A tingle raced up his spine and he pulled left and right, trying desperately to free himself, but his body did not move, nor did the hysterical shrieks make it past his windpipe. Zelda curled her hand around his dick and pulled it out.

Squeezing him, she wrapped her lips around his tip and pushed down, her dead mouth like ice, her slimy tongue squirming like a graveyard worm.

He broke down and cried, his head hanging and his shoulders shaking.

Suddenly, the scene changed: He was flat on his back and Zelda was on top of him, her hands pinning him to the bed. She was naked now, her sagging breasts swaying with the motion of her body and her sallow skin tight on her ribs, putting Lugosi in mind of starving children in Africa. Her chapped lower lips enfolded his head, and her frigid walls slid dryly down his shaft. His hands, lead by an unseen master, went to her deflated tits, and he cupped them in his palms, his thumbs kneading her leaking nipples. She increased her speed and stared down at him with sadistic arousal. " _I'm gonna twist your dick so you'll never get out of me again...never get out of me again...NEVER GET OUT OF ME AGAIN! NEVER GET OUT OF ME AGAIN!_ She slammed her hips to his at the end of each threat, her wasted cervix digging into his apex like razor blades.

Through tearful eyes, he saw her begin to go dim...watched as she faded away, her final laugh lingering like a puff of smoke. As soon as she was gone, the paralysis broke, and he sat up, his hands going to his forehead. Sometime later, he turned the lamp on and curled up facing the wall, unblinking and traumatized.

He thought he slept after that, but he wasn't sure; his shattered mind blanked and for a while, he knew nothing...then the voices came back. Mocking him for being raped. Laughing because he lost his virginity to that... _thing,_ telling him it would happen again tonight, and the night after, and the night after, and the night after until he snapped and killed his parents. _Zelda wants blood or cummys, Lugosi. The choice is yours._

A vision of his parents chopped into little pieces came upon him, and a strangled sob escaped his lips. The voices laughed and laughed.

Somehow, he got dressed and made it downstairs with no memory of getting up. His mother sat at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and a worried frown on her face. He saw himself going to her, snatching the mug out of her hand, and smashing it against the side of her head; saw her falling to the floor, shaking on her hands as knees, blood coursing down her face. _Do it. Do it. Do it._

His stomach turned violently and hot vomit shot up from his depths. He clamped his mouth closed and swallowed it. "You look sick," she said, "are you alright?"

No, I'm not, I'm having terrible thoughts and hearing things and I think it's the house but it might be me, maybe I'm crazy and dangerous and I don't know...I don't know, I just want it to stop. He almost broke and let all of it out in a torrent of tears, but held it in. "I'm fine," he croaked, "I just didn't sleep well."

To his horror, she got up and came over. _CHOKE HER! CHOKE HER! CHOKE HER!_

He balled his hands into fists and exerted every ounce of self-control he had to keep them that way so that he _didn't_ choke her, even though the thought repulsed him. She stopped in front of him, lifted up on her tippy toes, and pressed her cool, dry hand against his forehead. He flicked his eyes shamefully away from hers, self-concious of the sickness he knew must be in them. "You're really warm," she fussed and rocked back on her heels; her features, usually so placid, tightened in motherly concern, and hot guilt at the thoughts he was having swept through him like a fire. Tears threatened to well in his eyes.

"I'm fine," he said and turned away so that she wouldn't see fear and self-loathing on his face. He opened his mouth to add something else, but the voices screamed at him to punch her instead, so he hurried out, terrified that he would give in and do what they wanted.

Outside, he waited at the foot of the driveway for the bus and tried to ignore the shouts, jeers, taunts, and commands. He wouldn't do any of those things...they could tell him to, but they couldn't make him. Mentally ill people who hurt others do so because their minds are often muddled and they believe that they themselves are in danger. The guy walking behind them isn't simply going in the same direction, they're an agent of some dark conspiracy following them; the old lady who gave them a nasty look at the grocery store wasn't just a curmudgeonly bitch, she was actively involved in a plot to kill them. Lugosi, for his part, wasn't paranoid, and his thinking, despite the voices and hallucinations, was relatively clear.

 _For how long, psycho?_

He took a deep, shuddery breath.

 _Yeah, how long until you_ really _go crazy?_

A gust of wind blew a drift of yellow leaves over his feet - embers from a celestial fire. The trees flanking either side of the street swayed back and forth, and more leaves drifted from their fiery boughs.

If that happened, he decided...if his thinking started to cloud...he would kill himself.

* * *

After Lugosi left and she was alone, Lucy sat anxiously at the kitchen table, her back stiff and her fingers curled around a coffee cup that trembled when she lifted it to her lips. Her stomach was in knots and though she was the only one in the house, she could feel presences around her - the air was thick and crackled with dark energy, and several times she caught a flash of movement from the corner of her eye: When she turned, nothing was ever there. The atmosphere, so recently light and happy, was now heavy and brooding, and it struck her that in less than twenty-four hours, her dream-come-true had turned into a waking nightmare. Lugosi was clearly terrified of _something,_ and Lincoln acted like a man in a trace, his movements stiff and wooden, his voice hollow and toneless. He woke her before he left with a dazed "I'm going to work now." She was curled up in the armchair where she fell asleep the night before, and before she even came fully awake, he was gone without so much as a goodbye kiss.

She took a sip and turned her eyes to the thin layer of dirt spread across the linoleum in front of the basement door. More tracked through the living room and up the stairs in the form of footprints that terminated at hers and Lincoln's bed. More was clumped on the sheets, which suggested that Lincoln was doing...something...down there, then dragged himself to bed afterwards. She was not brave enough to go down there and see what it was...not until Father Mancuso arrived.

Taking another drink, she checked the time on her phone. 8:05. When she talked to him yesterday, he said he would be here at nine. While she waited, she closed her eyes and cleared her mind of all thoughts. As a girl, she could induce psychic visions if she tried hard enough, but hadn't been able to in over twenty years.

 _What's here?_ She asked into the darkness.

Nothing responded.

She took a deep breath and asked again _What's here? What do you want?_

For a moment, nothing happened, then, like bubbles rising from the deep, inexplicable terror welled in her chest. The back of her neck tingled and her heartbeat sped up, clapping painfully into her ribcage. Pain flared across her neck, then, slowly, the fear drained away, leaving her cold and empty. Her eyes flew open and her fingertips fluttered to the side of her throat; they came away slick with blood, and her stomach sank.

A vampire?

No, no, that didn't _feel_ right. Sometimes the things that came to her in visions were symbolic. This was one of them, she knew. But what was it symbolic for?

It came to her, and she swallowed thickly.

Fear.

Whatever it was, it fed on fear, and it was sucking it from them the way a vampire sucked blood. An image of Lugosi crossed her mind: His fear filled eyes, his jitteriness, his tension. She knew then that he was the primary target. Somehow, the thing in the house was scaring him so that it could feast on his energy.

Then there was Lincoln.

She closed her eyes again and called up a picture of his face. Darkness swirled around it, and the low, chattering din of many voices struck up like a phantom symphony. Slowly, he faded, and a rough stone wall took his place, crimson light glowing through the cracks. The voices got steadily louder and louder, their timbre increasing as their excitement grew.

Before she could make out words, a sharp knock cut through the vision, and it dispelled like smoke. She came back to herself with a gasp and sat back, her hand slapping to her throbbing forehead.

The knock came again, and her heart skipped a beat. Cautiously, she got to her feet and went into the living room, her hand closing on the cross. At the door, she looked through one of the flanking windows and let out a pent up breath. Father Mancuso, a short, bullish man with thin white hair and a face heavily ceased by age, stood on the step, clad in black pants and a green coat over a black shirt, a Roman collar denoting his occupation. A black bag, like that an old timey country doctor might carry, was clutched in one hand, filled, presumably, with religious artefacts.

She unlocked the knob and opened it, a rush of cold air blowing over her. Father Mancuso nodded curtly. "Morning," he said, his voice low and raspy.

"Thank you for coming," Lucy said and stepped aside so that he could enter. "It's worse than I thought."

The old priest cast an appraising glance around the room, his faded blue eyes searching for outward signs of the demonic but finding none. "There's certainly a strange atmosphere," he mused.

"I know," she said with a rush of shame. She knew it now, but not before yesterday - prior to the thing trying to get into her head, the house felt normal to her. Being a psychic, even a lapsed one, she should have noticed it instantly. That she didn't disturbed her.

She lead Father Mancuso into the kitchen and directed him to the table; he sat with a weary sigh and set the bag in front of him. She poured them both cups of coffee and sank into the chair across from him.

Lucy and Lincoln had known Father Mancuso for over twenty-five years, ever since he took over St. Peter's following Father Callahan's death. For a time, they attended Sunday Mass regularly, but drifted away over the years, as many Catholics are wont to do. They only went now on Easter and Christmas.

Many modern priests do not believe in the tangibility of evil - they discount tales of possession as fiction much the same way as everyone else.

Father Mancuso was not one of them. He was adamant that the forces of evil wage active war against human beings, and claimed to have presided over a dozen exorcisms. He also once alluded to having "destroyed" a vampire in a town in Maine. He was the only person she and Lincoln ever told about their own brushes with the supernatural, and he took both tales in stride. Lucy suspected that he had mild psychic powers, but that was based on a feeling alone, so she couldn't be certain.

"Tell me exactly what's been happening," he said now, his wizened hands coming to rest on the table's edge.

Taking a deep breath, Lucy told him everything, starting with what happened the previous morning and ending with the visions she had right before he knocked. He listened intently, nodded here and there, and urged her on when she faltered while recounting Lugosi's weird behavior. Half way through, he began to sweat and she paused as he took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his glistening face.

By the time she was done, he was pale.

"This is an especially powerful entity," he said, "from what you've said, I think it might be one of the strongest I've ever encountered. Nothing evil, however, can stand up to the might of God." He opened his bag with trembling hands and pulled out a stole which he then put over his shoulders. He got cumbersomely to his feet, and winced in pain.

"Are you alright?" Lucy worried.

"I am fine," he said and took a cross and vial of holy water from the bag. "It's just very hot in here."

Lucy's brow knitted in confusion. It didn't feel hot to her. In fact, she was cold, but that was most likely the inner chill permeating her bones.

Turning to the basement door, Father Mancuso tightened his grip on the cross. "This creature dwells in the cellar," he said, "and that is where we must start."

Standing, Lucy followed him, her stomach clawing with expectant dread. He reached out and took the knob in his hand...then yanked it away with a pained hiss and staggered back, the crucifix clattering to the floor. Lucy's heart jumped and she grabbed him to keep him from falling. "Are you alright?" she asked.

Sweat sheened his face and his chest heaved for air. She helped him back into the chair and knelt beside him, feeling his forehead; his flesh burned with fever, and sickly mist swirled in his eyes. "I...I don't know," he managed at length.

Getting up, she went to the sink, filled a glass with water, and gave it to him. He drank deeply and sat it on the table. Some of the color returned to his cheeks and he took a deep breath. "I don't know what this thing is, Ms. Loud," he said, "but I advise you and your family to leave at once."

Leave?

Lucy opened her mouth to speak, but no words would form. "What about the might of God?" she finally asked.

Swallowing with a click, Father Mancuso looked at her, his expression drawn and grave. "Whatever is in your basement," he said, "has nothing to do with God."

* * *

Lincoln stared blankly at his computer , hands poised over the keyboard. A spreadsheet filled the screen before him, and while he'd done a million of these things over the past fifteen years, he couldn't for the life of him remember exactly what he was supposed to do.

 _Dig._

No, not that. He cocked his head to one side in thought, but nothing came; his mind was muddled and sluggish, and if he tried to think, he'd go back to the basement, to the thrill of digging, to the promise of peace, love, and serenity contained behind the stones.

Sighing, he sat back in his chair and looked over his shoulder as someone passed his cubicle. He wasn't in love with his job, but he liked it enough and he never slacked or missed a day. Even so, he was close to getting up, walking out, and going home to -

 _Dig._

Yes. To dig. They needed to be let out.

He turned his head to the other side now, trying but failing to remember just exactly who _they_ were. His sisters? That didn't make any sense, but when he thought too hard about it, shadows crowded his brain.

The _who_ of it didn't matter - all he knew was that he needed to dig, the way a squirrel knows that it must store nuts. It doesn't know why it must do what its instincts are telling it to, but it does it anyway.

Last night, he made good progress...he thought. He tried to remember but it was a haze. He vaguely recalled pulling stones from the wall and stacking them in the corner, then digging into the soft dirt where they used to be, but maybe that was a false memory.

Presently, his stomach rumbled and he got up, wincing at the soreness in his back and arms. He didn't know how long he worked, but it felt like it was a while. When he woke that morning, he was draped across the bed on his stomach, his face buried in the cover and still wearing the same dirty, sweat drenched clothes from the night before. Getting to the shower was hard, but after letting the hot water soothe his weary muscles, he felt better. The next thing he knew, he was sitting at his desk and typing a response to an email he didn't remember reading.

Deep in his heart, he knew something was strange, but the irresistible urge to dig blotted it out. It was a gnashing _need_ that would consume him if he didnt feed it, and as he made his way to the lunch room, he seriously entertained the idea of sneaking away.

There was just one problem.

Lucy.

She couldn't know.

In the kitchen, he took his lunch from the fridge and closed the door, a yellow sticky note coming level with his eyes. _Whoever threw my lunch away, that was not nice._ The message was punctuated with a frownie face. Something about it struck Lincoln as devilishly funny, and he threw back his head and laughed. He plucked the note from the door and threw that away too.

Back at his desk, he ate while looking at the screen, the blinking cursor hypnotic. _Dig,_ it flashed. _Dig, dig, dig, dig, dig._ A snatch of song bubbled up from the depths of his mind, something from a children's movie that Lugosi liked when he was little. _Dig a tunnel...dig, dig a tunnel._ One corner of his mouth turned up in a grin and he started to hum around the food in his mouth. _Dig a tunnel...mud and clay are a Lincoln's friend...always more around the bend...and when you get to your tunnel's end...Hallelujah, let's dig again!_

Now he wanted to dig. Badly. He pressed his knees together like a schoolgirl feeling the first pinch of sexual desire and swallowed a lump of mushy sandwich. The tuna was gritty today. Almost like...dirt.

He took another bite and savored it, his jaw working from side to side and his eyes lidding in rapture. When he was done, he frowned at his empty hands. He needed more

Getting up, he returned to the kitchen and rummaged around the fridge, finding a Tupperware container with a sticky note on top. _No touching._ He took it out, grabbed a fork from the drying rack by the sink, and went to his desk, where he ate pilfered mac and cheese pretending it was soil.

 _Dig a tunnel_

 _Dig a tunnel is what we do  
Life's a tunnel, we'll dig it, too  
Dig a tunnel is what we sing  
Dig a tunnel is everything_

He was vaguely aware of his dick getting hard and his heart racing. _Dig...dig...dig…_

When he was finished with the stolen lunch, he threw the Tupperware into the trash can and went back to his work, humming to himself and nursing a throbbing erection. He imagined thrusting it into cold dirt and a shiver streaked down his spine.

"Hey, Linc," an annoying voice said.

Lincoln glanced over his shoulder and inwardly groaned. It was Bill from accounting. A hefty man with black hair and a soft, pink face, Bill wore a dark suit over a white shirt stretched tight across his bulging gut; he leaned against the wall of Lincoln's cublical and held a paper cup in his hand, reminding Lincoln of a redneck at a kegger. He labored under the perpetual impression that Lincoln was his best friend in the world, but Lincoln secretly didn't like him. No one did. He was a motor mouth and talked about the most banal things under the sun, like sports. He was a huge Red Sox fan; during baseball season, he listened to games on his radio and when his team scored a touchdown or goal or what the fuck ever it is in baseball, he'd jump up and yell like an Indian celebrating his fifth scalping of the day.

 _Dig a tunnel...dig a tunnel._

On a normal day, Lincoln did not like Bill, but right now, ansty with the need to dig, he hated him _and_ the horse he rode in on. "Hey, Bill," he said, trying to keep the disdain from his voice but failing.

Bill was too dumb to notice. "How's it comin'?" He gestured toward the screen with his cup, and a little bit of water sloshed over the side, landing like droplets of rain on the floor.

"It's coming," Lincoln said. "You?"

Any sensible person would give a curt and professional reply ( _it's going fine, real fine_ ), but Bill was not a sensible person. He drew a deep breath, and Lincoln cringed, already knowing he was in for this guy's life story. "I been better. Someone tossed my lunch in the trash yesterday, then today, it's totally missing." He shook his head sadly. "Can you believe it? Some people are just _that_ inconsiderate. I was really hungry yesterday and today I was looking forward to my wife's mac and cheese. It's the best. She uses this…"

Lincoln tuned him out.

 _Dig a tunnel...dig, dig, can you dig it, yes I can, dig faster, deeper, harder, dig me, baby DIG DIG DIG._

"...piece of my mind." Bill took a drink of water and sighed, "Anyway, you have a good day, I gotta get back to it."

Lincoln nodded absently. "Yeah, you to it," he muttered, not realizing he mixed up his thoughts. He meant to say _you too._

Alone, he went back to his work; while talking to Bill, his hard-on fell limp, but now it came roaring back and he grinned at the thought of what he was going to do to the dirt when he got home. Dig a tunnel, dig, dig, dig a tunnel. He blinked when he saw that phrase staring back at him from the screen.

 _Dig a tunnel_

 _Dig a tunnel_

 _Dig a tunnel_

 _Dig a tunnel_

 _Dig a tunnel_

 _Dig a tunnel_

Kind of lost its meaning.

He laughed and started to hit BACKSPACE but his finger froze when a loud, piercing wail of desperation exploded in the middle of his skull.

 _COME HOME NOW HELP US GOD PLEASE!_

Before he knew he was moving, he was on his feet and hurrying toward the door to the hall like a man in a dream, the world going gray around him and his heart squeezing in a vise grip of terror. Something was happening his tunnel was in danger he had to get home and stop it stop the threat stop Lucy stop Lucy stop Lucy kill her if he had to protect them they're not strong enough yet _KILL LUCY KILL LUCY KILL LUCY._

Just before he reached the door, a woman passed by; Lincoln shoved her roughly out of the way and slammed through, her cries of pain and the shocked gasps of horrified witnesses falling on deaf ears. His mind was choked with fog...he was completely under _their_ control.


	8. The Thing in the Basement

_**The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.**_

 _ **H.P. Lovecraft**_

After Father Mancuso left, Lucy went upstairs and hurriedly packed a bag, blindly grabbing armfuls of hers and Lincoln's clothes and shoving them in. Her face was a strained mask of worry and her hands shook as she pulled the zipper closed. She hefted the bag over her shoulder and went into Lugosi's room - the bed was a tangle of sheets and clothes littered the floor, left where they fell. Keeping his room a mess wasn't like him; he was usually neat and organized to the point of OCD. That he left it this way turned Lucy's stomach because it clearly showed how greatly this...thing...was affecting him.

Dropping the bag onto the bed, the opened it and snatched as many articles of clothing from the floor as she could find: A pair of pants, two shirts, underwear, and three socks. She jammed them in, closed it, and rushed out into the hall, her footsteps echoing eerily off the shadow-covered walls. At the top of the stairs, she paused. Was there anything else she needed? She ran through a mental checklist but gave up halfway through and pounded down the steps. Getting the hell out of this house was the most important thing right now.

In the foyer, she grabbed her purse from the end table and glanced over her shoulder: The sun-bathed living room stood empty, looking normal, even peaceful. If it wasn't for the thick tension in the air, she might have been able to convince herself that she was going crazy and that all of the things that had happened over the past twenty-four hours were a figment of her imagination.

Keen loss flooded her as she studied the scene - this was supposed to be hers and Lincoln's forever home; they were going to live here, love here, and grow old here. They were going to have a big, bright, affectionate golden retriever and one day, far in the future, their grandchildren were going to build forts out of blankets and chairs in the living room. None of that would come to pass, however, because their happy home was infected with a disease as old as time: Evil.

She didn't know what kind of evil it was, and she didn't care.; her family was in danger, and protecting them was all that mattered to her. As a younger woman she may have wanted to stay and fight, the way she and Lincoln fought evil before, but she was older now, and a mother. Lugosi was the most precious thing in her life, and even the faintest possibility of him being harmed made her sick; she didn't care about the house, or whatever resided in it, she just wanted her son safe.

Turning away, she went to the door and tried the handle.

Stuck.

Frowning, she jiggled it, but it wouldn't budge. Panic rose in her and she pounded her fist against the frame.

It didn't want her to leave.

That knowledge came from seemingly nowhere, but she did not doubt or question it. The thing in the basement, whatever it may be, was trying to keep her here. She stepped back from the door, heart throbbing in fear, and looked frantically around for something she could use, her eyes falling on the coat rack. She unslung her bag and purse, crossed to it, and removed one of the detachable arms - it was heavy in her hand. She went to the window, gripped the arm tight, and brought it around in a deadly arc. It hit dead center, but the glass didn't shatter, didn't even crack. She drew back and smashed it again, and again, grunts of exertion flying from her lips with every blow.

Nothing.

Damn it.

Terror was beginning to claw at her and, panting, she threw the arm aside and raked her fingers through her hair. Maybe -

A voice spoke behind her, low and grating, and her body went rigid.. "Mom?"

Lugosi?

She turned...and her heart dropped.

Lugosi stood in front of her with his shoulders slumped and his arms dangling limply at his sides. The left side of his face was a ruined mess, jagged bits of bone poking through tattered, bloody skin. Chunky bits of brain fell from a wound on his temple and plopped wetly on the floor. His brow angled down in a dark V, and his black, soulless eyes burned with hateful intensity. Her blood turned to ice water and her hand fluttered to her mouth.

Rolling his neck and oozing more brains from his shattered cranium, Lugosi took a shambling step forward, and her heart spasmed. She uttered a sharp yelp and fell back against the door. "Why'd you let them get me?" he asked, hurt and accusation in his voice. "Why did you let me die?"

Those words ripped into her like shrapnel and hot tears sprang to her eyes. She knew it wasn't him, but that didn't stem the horror surging in her breast. "Y-You're not Lugosi," she stammered through her fingers.

The thing pretending to be her son grinned sadistically and took another step forward. A shaft of light falling through the window behind her touched it, and it shimmered like a wind-swept mirage. "I will be," it said ominously. "He's going to die and so is your brother." It laughed, and Lucy's paralysis broke. Pressing her back to the wall, she edged slowly toward the living room archway. The thing turned to follow her with its soulless eyes. "You're all going to die," it said, its voice changing, lower, deeper.

She backed into the living room, her trembling hand clutching the cross, whether for protection or comfort she didn't know. Lugosi grew dim, then vanished, the sound of his horrible laughter lingering in her head.

Warmth, like the kiss of the sun, fell upon her shoulder, and she whipped around with a cry of alarm. John Carver, the vampire she and Lincoln battled all those years ago, favored her with a leering simper. She flashed back to the last time she saw him, reeling wildly and screaming in pain amidst the flames of a burning nightmare. He was tall then, but he was taller now, broader too, looming over her like a mighty oak. His gray skin clung tightly to his skull and his pale blue eyes regarded her with a hunger akin to sexual desire. He wore a wool peacoat over a Victorian era vest, a wide, red cravat around his throat, and held a walking stick in one hand...she didn't remember him having one in life, but he did now.

"Lucy," he said, glimpses of his fangs visible as he spoke, "you've grown more beautiful with age." His tone, a low growl, sent shivers down her spine, and the way his eyes caressed her made her skin crawl.

"You're not real," she blurted and stepped warily back. It was trying to scare her, throwing visions of the most awful things hiding in the recesses of her mind - all the fears she kept locked away out of sight. She swallowed hard and steeled her resolve. She wasn't going to give it her energy. She wouldn't allow it to feed on her.

Carver chuckled in the back of his throat and came forward. Lucy's heart leapt, but instead of running or facing the apparition down, she turned her back on it and started for the kitchen, her mind racing. She had to break its hold just long enough for her to get away, but how?

In the kitchen, she spared a glance over her shoulder. Carver was gone, in his place The Man With No Name lifted his hand and wiggled his fingers, a gleaming, toothy smile glinting from the shadows of his face. He wore a dusty fedora and a long brown trench coat over a ratty gray sweater. "I got something for you," he said and reached into his coat. Lucy turned her head and crossed to the counter, not knowing where to go or what to do, just needing time to think, think, hatch a plan, think. She splayed her hands on the edge and bowed her head. The doors and windows were sealed and something told her that no matter what she tried, the thing would foil her.

"Here," The Man With No Name said from directly behind her. He laid something on the counter with a weighty clunk, and she couldn't stop her eyes from going to it.

A .38 snub nose revolver.

When he spoke again, his rank breath puffed hotly against the side of her neck. "Put it in your mouth...and pull the trigger."

She looked at the gun...if she squinted, she could see through it, as though it were a ghost.

"I told you...I don't want anything from you."

He laughed. "Everyone wants something."

Lucy pressed her hand to her forehead, closed her eyes, and clenched her teeth. _GO AWAY!_ she screamed in her mind, and an electric zap jolted her brain, making her jump. The Man With No Name gasped in pain, then a gust of stale, cemetery wind washed over her, signifying his passage. She looked over her shoulder, and the kitchen stood empty.

She knew the feeling of being mentally cased by phantom fingers the way she was yesterday...and she also knew the feeling of explusing psychic energy even though she had not felt it since she was a girl. Her brain crackled with the electric sensation of _power_ and thoughts that were not her own slithered through her mind. _Different… not like the others...strong._ There was something profoundly _strange_ about them - their shape, their texture, the way they felt. Like they didn't _belong._ That was an odd way to put it, but that's how they felt, fundamentally…

...alien.

She closed her eyes. Usually visually metaphors helped, and presently she focused on those thoughts, imagining herself reaching out and literally grabbing one in the form of a firefly. When she closed her hand around it, a vision filled the world. Dense jungle, starry skies, a ball of fire streaking through the heavens, getting brighter as it came closer and closer to earth. It sailed over the treetops with a thunderous roar and slammed into the ground, exploding in a flash of brilliance. Something grabbed her and dragged her forward, and as she watched, a thousand shrieking _things_ resembling leeches swarmed out from the fire and burrowed into the ground.

The scene jumped ahead. Wigwams and wood fires sprang up along the lake; hunter-gatherers from the north. They didn't stay long; the land was cursed and ghosts walked the woods at night. The Indians shunned the land, and so, too, did the first white settlers. Over time, the legends were either forgotten or dismissed as superstition, and people came, but like the Ojibwe before them, they did not remain.

Lucy blinked, and a house now stood where there had once been open field, a Dutch Colonial with a gambrel roof, dormers, and a bay window. Inside, a man in an old fashioned suit stood in the living room, hunched over and panting, his face speckled with blood and an ax clutched in his hands. Body parts littered the floor, and voices swirled in his fevered mind. She could just make them out if she listened hard enough. _Madman...murderer...look what you did...you'll go to the gallows._ She felt the man's fear, felt it being slowly drained from him like soda through a straw.

Dropping the ax, he went into the attic, threw a length of rope over an exposed rafter, and hanged himself.

Darkness stole across her eyes, then, in a flash, she saw herself standing at her counter, her head bowed. This other Lucy turned; blood smeared her lips and long, wicked fangs overhung her bottom lip.

With a start, she came back to the present. Voices chattering endlessly in her skull.

They sounded afraid.

She didn't know how, but she was draining their energy the way they drained everyone else's, soaking it up like a sponge and growing more powerful by the minute. She pushed away from the sink, went to the back door, and tried the handle.

It turned easily.

 _Leave...leave...leave…_

Its plan, she knew in an instant, was to keep her here and siphon her mental energy, then to do the same thing to Lincoln and Lugosi. It knew she was stronger than the average person, but it underestimated _how_ strong. It wanted her metaphorical blood because it was richer and more sustaining, and it let that single-minded frenzy blind it. Only now, after she'd been unconsciously leeching off of it for a while, did it realize, and now, _it_ was scared of _her._

 _Leave…_

She hesitated, then closed the door. She was going to end this. She turned, and a voice so loud it made her stagger exploded in the center of her skull.

 _COME HOME NOW HELP US GOD PLEASE!_

She saw Lincoln spring to his feet and rush out of the office, his eyes clouded and dazed. He was completely in its thrall now.

 _KILL LUCY KILL LUCY KILL LUCY._

Ignoring the frantic voices, she went into the living room and grabbed the gas can from its spot by the fireplace. Back in the kitchen, she opened the junk drawer and took out a long grill lighter. She turned, and froze.

Her mother, clad in a pink button up blouse and looking the way she had when Lucy was a teenager, blonde hair beginning to gray and face starting to wrinkle, stood between her and the basement door, arms at her sides and features twisted in seething hatred.

"You're disgusting," she spat.

When Mom and Dad found out about her and Lincoln, they were both upset, but Mom more so than Dad. Twice before she moved in with Lincoln, Mom sat her down and tried to _talk some sense_ into her. She never said outright that hers and Lincoln's relationship was disgusting, but Lucy could tell from the way she looked at her that she did, and knowing that her own mother thought she was repulsive bothered her far more deeply than she ever admitted, even to Lincoln.

Leaning slightly forward, Mom narrowed her eyes to reptilian slits. "You make me sick."

Those words cut Lucy even though she knew that the thing was not really her mother. "You aren't Mom," she said flatly, "go away."

With that, she walked through the apparition as though it were a puff of smoke. "You're a whore and your son should have died in the womb," Mom said.

Lucy ignored her and tried the basement door.

The handle wouldn't turn.

"Open," she commanded, but nothing happened.

Gripping it tight, she closed her eyes and summoned all the energy she could. A scream filled her head and the door flew open, slamming against the wall. "Stop this right now," Mom said, alarm creeping into her voice.

Lucy went down the stairs; she did not stop when John Carver and The Man With No Name appeared side by side at the bottom. "Turn around or we'll kill Lugosi," Carver warned. His voice was different than before, toneless, wooden; the thing was faltering, unable to keep up the illusion in its own fear.

She walked through them and went to the wall. A large section of stones was missing and a shallow tunnel had been carved into the soft earth behind it. She uncapped the can but froze when Lugosi's upper half popped from the hole like a Jack-in-the-box, his face pale and splattered with blood. His lips hung in tatters and one eye seeped yellow cemetery pus down his sunken cheek. Lucy's throat constricted, and even though it was only a mirage, she couldn't look at it; she forced her gaze to her feet, her fingers curling around the can's handle.

"Mom, why didn't you stop?" he asked flatly. It wasn't him speaking and she never in a million years would have mistaken it for his voice; the shadow might look like him, but it didn't sound like him.

She took a deep, steadying breath. "You're not my son. Go away."

A stale gust of wind blew over her, and when she looked up, the apparition was gone.

"You're totes gross."

Lucy looked over her shoulder as Leni stepped from the shadows. Her face was twisted in hatred and her hands balled into fists. She looked as she did when she was twenty except for one key detail: Her hair was red. Lucy favored her with a blank stare. "Leni's a blonde," she said and turned to the hole.

At a glance, it was three feet deep, roots sticking out of earthen walls like gnarled fingers from a grave. Putrid air rushed out from an indeterminable source and jammed itself into her nostrils. She closed her eyes and saw them, a million black, slimy _things_ nestling in the soil like cancer cells in a body. Their panicked chattering filled her head. They were speaking to each other, she realized, in whatever passed for a language among them, their slick bodies writhing in fear, reminding her of seething maggots in a bowl.

"We're very old, Lucy."

Her father stood next to her, hands on his hips and eyes pointed unwaveringly at the trench. He wore a pink blouse and brown slacks, an outfit she associated with her mother. The _thing_ was jumbling her memories, plucking them out with shaking hands and getting sloppy, working with the careless rush of something scrambling to preserve itself. Without turning, he continued, "There are billions of us in the stars, enough to overrun your planet in a matter of days. We don't want that, though." He turned to her, and the look of malevolent _hunger_ in his eyes made her shiver. "We like it here...we like _people_. But if you don't stop, we'll call for help, and you world will crumble."

It was lying.

Lucy didn't know how she knew - call it psychic intuition - but she did. Whatever they were, they didn't come here on purpose, and something told her that they couldn't have if they wanted to. They were like diseased spores blowing on the wind, drifting where ever time and happenstance took them, seeding planets and sucking up what energy they could.

"I don't believe you," she said. She upended the can and splashed gasoline into the hole, its astringent odor choking the air.

"You have to dig if you want to get us," The Man With No Name said from behind her.

"No, I don't," Lucy said. She sparked the lighter and touched it to the gas; flames caught with a _whump_ and crackled lowly. She threw the lighter away and took a step back.

 _HURRY HELP HURRY HURRY HURRY._

She called up a vision of Lincoln; he was doing 90 miles per hour down Route 10, five miles from home.

Holding her hands up, palms facing out, Lucy took a deep breath and strained as hard as she could. Her mind flashed, and the fire was sucked into the ground, racing through an ancient network of tunnels. Wordless howls of rage and agony filled her head, and she basked in it like a woman in gentle spring rain. The three phantoms in the basement all winked out of existence, and the screams tapered off as the creatures from outer space were consumed in the conflaguaration.

At Royal County High, the voices that had been plaguing Lugosi Loud stopped as if cut off by a switch, and he lifted his head from his hands, a tentatively hopeful expression on his face.

Lincoln came awake just as he parked in front of the house. His heart slammed and adrenaline surged through his veins. He could not remember the journey home or anything else for that matter. He started to get out but stopped when his phone rang.

It was his boss.

"Hello?"

"Loud, get your ass back here or you're fired."

Lincoln's heart dropped into his stomach. "Y-Yes, sir."

Inside, Lucy returned the cap to the gas can and went back upstairs. At the sink, she closed her eyes and searched the darkness, but it, like her new home, was empty. The evil had been vanquished.

She smiled.

* * *

Lugosi slipped his hand into Ramona's and threaded their fingers together. For the first time in days, he felt...normal...better than normal, actually.

They were moving side-by-side along the sidewalk; the afternoon light was growing weak and the air chilly. Ramona shivered when a gust of wind blew over them, and, letting go of her hand, Lugosi put his arm around her shoulder and drew her close. She melted into him and rested her head on his shoulder, one arm hugging his waist.

As if reading his mind, she said, "What was that you said yesterday about your house being haunted?"

Lugosi snickered. Maybe she did read his mind. Ramona, he thought, was more than met the eye, and so, too, was he. At lunch, they stared at each other across the table and carried an entire conversation without moving their lips. He felt her emotions, and she felt his as well. He'd always been sensitive and perceptive, but this was deeper, stronger; parapsychological bullshit that, he supposed, wasn't bullshit after all.

If he was right, then they were feeding off of one another, both getting stronger. Where that would lead, he didn't know. Maybe one day they'd be able to levitate things just by looking at them, or maybe he was wrong completely and they were _both_ crazy.

Who knew?

And who cared? The soft warmth of her body against his felt good and made his heart pleasantly race. That was all that mattered.

"I don't know," he said honestly, "I thought I was going crazy but…"

"...you aren't?"

He shrugged. "Truth be told, I don't know. I don't know anything anymore."

"Did you ever know anything to begin with?" she asked teasingly.

Lugosi thought and shook his head. "Nah, I don't know shit."

That made her laugh, and the musical sound of her laughter made _him_ laugh.

Then they kissed each other, and a crisp vision of the future passed between them: Many, many, many more kisses. Maybe a year's worth, maybe a lifetime's - neither knew and neither cared, for right now, everything was perfect.

Holding hands again, they strolled into the sunset.

* * *

 **I hope this ending doesn't disappoint anyone. I got three quarters of the way through this story and just...I don't know, hit a wall. Finishing it was extremely hard. I think the alien vampire things sucked a bunch of my energy out and I haven't gotten it back since.**


End file.
